The Apple Doesn't Fall Far
by twighlitFF
Summary: Jacob stopped Bella from jumping off the cliff in New Moon and Edward never returned. After 22 years, the Cullens move to Seattle for yet another fresh start and Edward winds up with yet another surprising lab partner... Bella's daughter.
1. Scented

**Please consider this a disclaimer for the duration of the story. I do not, nor have I ever or will ever, own anything associated with Twilight... I don't make any money from this and no copyright infringment is intended. The original characters and the plot, however, belong to me... and it is inadvisable to steal my shit, it makes me cranky and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.**

_Don't make us late on our first day, Edward_, Alice thought menacingly from downstairs.

I was so incredibly sick of first days.

And yet here we were again, another town, another new start, another first day… in Seattle this time. But it was Syracuse before that. And Nova Scotia before that. And Alaska before that… And Forks, Washington before that.

It was oddly comforting to be so near to Forks where I spent some of my best days. I could almost feel her near me, and I absently wondered, as I had so many times before, where she was and what she was doing, what had happened since I left her in those woods 22 years ago.

I wasn't sure if it made me noble or cowardly for never going back- I didn't want to hurt her or disrupt her life by showing up, but I also knew I couldn't handle seeing her go on without me. But it had been over two decades, and while I can't say it didn't still hurt to think about her, it was more of a dull aching pain than the sharp, persistent stabbing feeling that once occupied my chest for so long. Alice had seen her, she was alive and she was well and that's all I needed to know. I left so that she could be happy and lead a normal, healthy life and it made me happy to know that I'd accomplished that task.

So when Carlisle was offered a job by Seattle Grace Hospital's chief of surgery, I encouraged him to take it. The weather is right for us, we can still be out during the day most of the time, and I liked the feeling of being here, far enough so we were safe from recognition by any of the remaining Forks residents who might remember us, but close enough that I could feel a connection to the place that had brought me such happiness at one time. The only place I ever really thought of as home.

I was drawn out of my reverie by Alice stomping up the stairs. "Honestly, Edward, I could spare you some sympathy if you were at least playing with that glorious mop of yours, but you're just sitting here, and I really am anxious for our first day. I have a feeling it will be… interesting," she smirked.

"Should I bother trying to see what you're hiding from me?" I asked.

_Impenetrable encryption_, she thought, as she proceeded to recite the Book of Genesis, backwards, in Latin.

"Great, let's go." I pulled on a leather jacket and shuffled out to the garage with Alice on my heels, where Jasper was leaning up against my Mercedes. Minutes later, we were in the parking lot of Wilson Regional High School and making our way to the building.

_Enjoy your day_, Alice thought, taking Jasper's hand and tossing a smile in my direction as we parted ways. In that moment, I sort of envied Rosalie and Emmett's decision to live on their own for a bit and forego the high school façade. They had bought a house nearby and were doing their favorite newlywed act. I loved my family, truly, but Alice's clairvoyance combined with her secretive nature made me want to throttle her sometimes.

I took a seat in the back of my homeroom and looked over my schedule. So we meet again, junior year. So little has changed in the high school curriculum over the years, I was certain that I was in for a very dull semester. Metal shop, great, I can show the kids how I reshape steel without the use of tools or heat.

I looked down at my hands, listening intently to the thoughts of a brand new class of high school humans who would be boring me this year. Yes, I'm sexy… No, don't sit next to me.

It was a little better that it was the first day after summer break, everyone was just starting school and there was less of a spotlight on my siblings and me, so we could blend in easier, which was always helpful.

The bell rang too soon, and I started my day. Time crawled as I moved from class to class, until I seriously contemplated "home schooling" this year. I couldn't figure out just why, but I simply didn't have the patience for school at the present.

Eventually, I made it to chemistry, my last class before lunch. I sat at a lab table near the window and waited while the rest of the class filed in, gazing out the window at a rabbit hopping along the grassy lawn at the north end of the campus. _I knew it was almost lunchtime_, I thought with a cynical laugh. I heard the chair next to me move and ignored it, hoping to deter whoever planned to sit next to me.

That was when I smelled it.

Something I hadn't smelled in 22 years, something I had missed desperately and despised at the same time.

Freesia.


	2. Chemistry

I sensed her sit next to me and I drew in an unnecessary breath that lit a scorching fire in my throat. Painstakingly slowly, I turned my head to face her and found myself staring into beautifully familiar brown eyes.

Bella. She was my Bella.

My brain worked hard to make sense of what was happening. I wanted it so badly to be her that I tried to fit her into my perfect memories of Bella, but even as I exhausted my mind trying to make it true, I registered the slight differences between the creature beside me and the memory of my love.

She smelled like Bella, absolutely. Her scent assailed me as I searched her features. Nothing, no one, in the world smelled like Bella, until now of course. She had Bella's eyes, the color of melted milk chocolate and so expressive that I could see every emotion in them as her brain worked. I lowered my eyes and saw Bella's mouth too, the slightly unbalanced proportions of it with the top lip just a bit fuller than the bottom. My mouth continued to burn as I drank in her face.

But it wasn't Bella. Her nose was a little wider, and in place of Bella's flawless, pale skin was a beautiful light tan complexion. And her hair was thicker, fuller, shiny and jet black.

When I finally looked back up into those eyes, I could see her discomfort at my silence and obvious creepiness as I stared at her. Her smile dimmed. I had to fix it.

"Hello, my name is Edward Cullen," I gave her my most devastating smile. Dazzling, Bella would have said.

Her lips curved upward once more. "Emma Black. You must be new, there is no possible way I could have seen you last year and forgotten about it."

I worked to keep smiling as I answered, "Yes, my family just moved here from Syracuse, New York. I'm pleased to meet you." My insides were crumbling. I wanted to die. I had no doubt who she was and it tore my cold dead heart into cold dead shreds. This beautiful girl was so obviously the daughter of Bella Swan and Jacob Black.

"You as well, Edward Cullen."

"What a beautiful name, Emma," I tested.

"I understand that to be a compliment, but I really had no hand in choosing it. I'll tell my mother you think so, though." She smiled again.

"An Austen fan?" Please God don't let me have said that out loud.

"Yes! Good guess!" She grinned at me. Die, die, die, Edward. "So, Edward Cullen, what exactly are the chances of you wanting to be my lab partner for the duration of this delightful year in chemistry?"

Was this Alice's idea of an interesting day? I'll have to give that to her, I haven't been this interested in ages. Why wasn't Emma scared of me like she should be? Perhaps she had inherited a lack of self preservation from her mother. I wondered what else was in her genes. And so I listened, as hard as I could.

_Say yes_, her mind pleaded.

"Yes." I said without thinking. She looked delighted. "Of course I'll be your partner."

"Ducky. That's a pretty serious commitment you've just made, Edward Cullen, so probably you should tell me about yourself."

"You keep using my full name."

"I like it," she shrugged, "nice round consonant sounds, I like the way it rolls off my tongue."

"It's rather formal."

"Then can I call ya Eddie?"

"Not if you expect me to answer."

She gave a magnificent smirk. "Ok. So, _Edward_, you were about to tell me your deepest darkest secrets. Or a condensed, casual small talk version of your life. Either way, let's hear it."

On autopilot, I began to regale her with the carefully constructed story we had put together about our history and our move here. Inwardly, I was still rejoicing. I could _hear_ her. Intently, as I continued speaking, I listened again for her mind.

Nothing.

I tried harder.

Still nothing.

I looked into those eyes, orbs of emotion, and I knew she was thinking _something_. But I was deaf to it. Hmm.

When I had finished, she looked satisfied with the tale. I continued to try to pry into her brain with no luck. Looks like we were going to have to do this the old fashioned way. "Quid pro quo, Emma. I think turnabout is fair play," I told her.

"Is that like 'I showed you mine, now show me yours?'" She asked with a cocked eyebrow. I barked out a laugh. No, she most certainly was not Bella Swan.

"Something like that, yes."

"Well I'm 15, a sophomore, and I've lived around here all my life. I actually grew up about an hour or so from here in a super small town, and then we moved to Seattle when I was about 10, because my mom went to college here. I'm an only child and I act like it. My behavior is often interpreted as socially inappropriate, but it's really just me saying what I think. I don't really have a filter. It goes from here to here with no purification process." She said, tapping her temple and then her mouth. "And I think you might be the most beautiful person who's existed, like, ever."

Well I guess that proved her point about the honesty. And what fascinating word choice… "person" and "existed." Like she already knew.

She laughed at the surprised look on my face. "Sorry, I'm something of an open book, so to speak."

Her very mother had spoken words so similar to me 22 years ago. I remembered it with painful clarity. _My face is so easy to read – my mother always calls me her open book_, Bella had said.

_On the contrary, I find you very difficult to read,_ I'd disagreed. Something told me I wouldn't have the same problem with Emma.

No, certainly not. I wouldn't have any problem with Emma because we were going to leave immediately. We could not stay in Seattle. _Bella_ lived in Seattle. This was not part of the plan. I began mentally sifting through our options and devising an exit strategy.

"Edward?" I met her eyes and realized I hadn't said anything yet. Lovely, now I'm rude.

"Maybe we should call People Magazine and let them know. I feel like they might owe me cover then."

"Hugh Jackman's gonna shit when he finds out he's been dethroned."

Profanity that I normally would have balked at just seemed to fit her character. I never would have thought it was acceptable to hear a woman talk that way but it just seemed natural for her. It's who she was, raw and unapologetic, a true presence, using all the space around her as she talked with her hands.

I tried to go back to my escape planning but I couldn't concentrate on anything else but her face.

"This is a junior chemistry class." I said dumbly.

She leaned in close to me and lowered her voice "I'm sort of brilliant. Don't tell anyone though. It's terrible for my image."

Every cell in my body vibrated with her nearness. I wanted to touch her so badly it ached, my Bella reincarnate, so close I could taste her.

"Are you very popular then?" I asked.

"Hardly. I don't give a rat's ass about these wieners," she said, gesturing towards the room, "but acting like you don't care makes you cool or something by proxy, so they all know who I am anyway. You know how in movies there's always some artsy weird guy and it's not trendy to like him but everyone respects him even though they don't 'get' him? I might be that guy. Basically they let me do my thing and they do theirs. We have an agreement of sorts."

I wished she would keep on talking. I loved hearing her speak and knowing that it mirrored her thoughts exactly.

Yet why had I heard her mind once and then never again? It was grating on me, I had to figure out why.

That's when another voice popped into my head. _I told ya_, Alice gloated from outside the room. I could see her peering in from the hallway and I glowered at her. _Oh Edward, she's phenomenal. This is going to be fun_. I pointedly ignored her and turned my attention back to Emma. _I know you can still hear me Edward. And I saw you decide to go. But then you decided to stay_.

Did I?

_Yes_.

I tried to shoo her with a nod of my head, but she just stood there with her face in the window, smirking.

"What was that, just there?" Emma asked.

"What was what?"

"That little tic you just had, is there…" Observant little thing. She followed my gaze to the doorway where Alice was smiling like an idiot, waving. "Ohh… is that your girlfriend? Are you in trouble now?" she asked mischievously.

"Close, my sister."

"Well aren't I an asshole." She spun around and waved back, sending Alice dancing down the hall.

"I wouldn't go that far," I said.

"Give it time, I'm sure you will sooner or later." God that smile. It was genuine and beautiful, it melted me every time. I could see almost every tooth in her head that smile was so big.

She was positively disarming.

The teacher walked in then, effectively ending our banter. She listened intently to everything he said, and I watched her with fascination, wishing I could hear her brain as it processed. She was so unlike anyone I'd met since, well, her mother.

At the end of the lesson she stood up and accidentally knocked her books, and then her bag, and then her pencil off the table. My heart ached as I watched her fumble through Bella's clumsiness. She ducked down to scoop up the bag and books, and I reached for the pencil. When we had righted ourselves, she dropped the books back on the table and looked at me sheepishly. "I'm not exactly graceful. Wanna rethink spending a year with me and noxious chemicals?"

No.

I laughed lightly and went to hand her the pencil as she reached toward me for it at the same time and she grabbed my hand.

I wanted to pull it away, I knew I should have, but the warmth of her hand felt so good against my skin and I loitered on it a second too long.

"I think you have poor circulation, Cullen. You ought to have Doctor Daddy take a look at that." As I registered what she was doing, I couldn't fathom that it was happening and was rendered powerless to stop her. She pulled my hand between hers and lowered her mouth to it, huffing hot air onto my palm and as she sandwiched it between her hands and rubbed a delicious friction into my skin, looking up at me from under a thick fringe of black eyelashes. The heat was incredible. She was unbelievable.

As quickly as she had taken it, she dropped it once more. "See ya out there, kid," she chucked me under the chin, and was gone.

I had a hard time remembering how to pick my jaw up from the floor.


	3. Birthdays & Boundaries

I could have gone through the whole production of leaving again. Just like I did when I met Bella in Forks. I could have stayed at Tanya's or gone to Italy for a while, but I already knew I would end up back in Seattle. Emma was the perfect enigma to me, and I was fascinated by her.

The reasons I would have left, then and now, were so drastically different from each other. Then, it was because I was a direct, physical danger to Bella's life. Her sweet blood sang to me and I didn't think I could control my thirst. I left so that I wouldn't kill her and force my family to cover up my mistake. Now, I've long since been desensitized to the urge to kill at her scent. Now, it just twisted and tightened my chest.

I couldn't leave Emma. I had to know more about her. I had to know about Bella's life from this stranger who was so very like her mother, and at the exact same time, so very different. She was Bella, repackaged. And she felt like a gift to me.

"Meet anyone special today?" Alice sang as she arrived at my side and walked to the car with me.

"That could have gone very badly, Alice. A little warning would have been nice."

"I knew it would work out," she shrugged. "She looks like her. Smells like her too."

"Enough."

Jasper was leaning up against the Mercedes when we arrived. _Good luck_, he thought sincerely. _I'm not sure what your angle is, Edward, but I really hope it works out_. I could tell he meant it. Jasper still suffered daily from residual guilt that his attack on Bella's birthday had inadvertently prompted our move from Forks, and he feels responsible for my surly demeanor. I do my best to remind him that I was surly for nearly a century before Bella too, so he should lighten up. I knew he was sorry. I knew he never intended to hurt her, and his behavior just drove home the point that Bella was not meant for my world.

Was Emma?

No, certainly not. But I wasn't in love with Emma. I wouldn't entangle her in a mythical universe of danger and deceit where her life was constantly in jeopardy. But I needed her to teach me about her mother, I needed to know that I had truly done the right thing, and I was too wrapped up in the perfect irony that this situation presented to turn away from it.

Driving home, I was too lost in my own thoughts to concentrate on those of my passengers, though I knew we were all focused on the same subject. I was anxious and apprehensive to breech the topic with my father. I knew he would have excellent insight on the situation, but I was worried that I wouldn't want to hear it.

As we walked into the house, I could hear Carlisle and Esme in the kitchen speaking softly. "A word, please, Carlisle," I said evenly as I made my way to the dining room and sat, unnecessarily, at the useless table to wait for him.

A moment later he strode in. "Son?" He asked, looking concerned.

I've never been one to beat around the bush when it came to uncomfortable topics. The people I interact with get no privacy with me in their heads, and it would be wrong of me not to at least try to offer the same honesty to my family. So I began, "Bella's living in Seattle."

No response from my father.

"She… she married Jacob Black. They have a daughter named Emma. She's my chemistry partner."

Carlisle remained blank.

"Bella's child sat beside me today. I smelled her and talked to her and touched her," I continued.

"And?" Carlisle prompted.

"AND?!"

"Well what happened? Are you upset? Did you try to kill her? How do you feel?"

"No, no, and… fine? I'm not sure. I'm fascinated by her Carlisle, truly. She's so different, and sometimes so similar, and she looks like her and smells like her and I think I was happy when we were together today. I felt oddly complete, like she was the missing piece to my puzzle. My key to Bella." I answered.

"I'm not sure you should have a key to her," Carlisle frowned.

"I don't want to disrupt her life. I want to learn that she's happy now. I'm just so drawn to the idea of knowing about someone who I had written off as part of my life. I know that I was right to leave… but I want to see it. And Emma is the way to do it. She's… special. She makes me feel… peaceful."

Carlisle was silent. His thoughts raced. His mind spanned from immediate relocation to mine and Bella's reconciliation and he went from one end of the spectrum to the other at warped speed. Finally, his eyes fell on me.

_Peaceful._

"Yes."

_Peaceful?_

"I find solace in seeing the girl I love through her daughter. It's like access to Bella in a way that somehow hurts less. It hurts, to be sure, but in a good way. Emma's like evidence that I had done right by Bella." I tried to explain.

"Edward," Carlisle began. I closed my eyes dreading what he would say next. I simply couldn't leave her. "I think that as long as you maintain a safe distance from Bella personally… then there's no reason for us to leave right now. I rather like Seattle, and our life here. As long as you're ok… we can certainly stay."

I was floored. I thought without a doubt that Carlisle would make us move, that he would be worried about my connection to my past and take us as far away from it as possible. I looked up at him quizzically.

_Surprised? I have faith in you Edward. I know you will do what is right. And if at some point we can no longer be here, I trust that you will tell us so we can address the problem._

"Be good, Son. Be happy. Breathe easy," he said on a laugh.

I was elated. Staying in Seattle with Carlisle's blessing was like a dream. I could barely wait to get to school the next day to see Emma. Yes, I was sick of first days. But second chances were looking better every minute.

***

The day dragged on. I itched to get into the chemistry lab so I could sit beside Emma and feel her presence if nothing more. When the bell finally rang, I had to work to restrain myself so I didn't race at inhuman speed to the science wing.

I sat at our lab table and feigned nonchalance while I waited for her to arrive. She strolled in and broke into a grin when she saw me, "Edward, you're looking brooding and pensive again today, good to see that wasn't a one-shot deal."

"Hello to you as well, Emma."

Her phone rang as she was sitting down. An achingly familiar melody that shot chills across my icy skin. "I like Debussy," she shrugged "excuse me for a minute, I have to take this. Cover me if the teacher shows up. Hello? Hi Mommy."

I could feel my senses overloading. First Clair de Lune and now Bella on the line? It was too much, I had to get away, but I couldn't resist the urge to hear the sound of her voice. God bless vampire senses.

_Emma? I was going to leave you a voicemail, aren't you in class?_

"Don't worry about it, I've got a sentry guarding my ass."

_You're crude, Emma. I just wanted to make sure you'd be home on time for dinner. Grandpa Charlie is coming and I'm making a lasagna, we're having cake from that bakery your father likes. It's important you don't be late._

"I hear ya, Mom. I gotta get back to the business of chemistry, but I'll see you tonight ok?"

_Be CAREFUL driving, Emma, please. Honestly I worried enough before you were mobile. I love you. Happy birthday._

"Thanks. Love you too, bye."

A knife wrenched in my heart as I heard Bella say "I love you." How many times had I heard her say it? Not nearly enough. Her voice was much the same, but a little throatier now, obviously older. But it was… nice to hear it. It didn't burn the way I expected it to. She sounded well, and that made me happy.

The next matter at hand… birthday? It was Emma's birthday? She hadn't said anything. How very Bella of her.

"Your mother?" I asked.

"She dotes." Emma said.

"What was so important that she had to interrupt your rousing chemistry lesson?"

"She said I have to be on time for dinner. As if I ever would. You don't get an ass like this missing dinners. My Grandpa is visiting from Forks, it's a teeny tiny town about an hour or so from here, down by where I lived as a kid."

I deliberately kept my eyes far from the ass of which she spoke."That's nice. Any special reason?" I pried.

"It's my birthday," she said simply.

"And you are…?"

"Sixteen."

"Yesterday you said you were 15." I led.

"Yesterday I was 15. Today I am 16. I think it's rude to toot your own birthday horn. If people don't know, don't force it on them! I blame Facebook. It spawns so many unenthusiastic and disingenuous birthday wishes. Your real friends know when it is!"

"Does that mean I'm a real friend? I don't have a Facebook. I just eavesdrop and prod until I find things out. Call me old fashioned."

"Yes, Cullen. We're clearly BFF."

"So what are your plans for the big day?" I asked.

"Driving! I got my license this morning. I'm now officially a menace to society."

"Well you have to let me take you out," I told her. "Now that we're 'BFF'." I couldn't stop myself. This hour a day was not nearly enough with her, I needed more.

"Did you miss the part where if I don't eat Bella's lasagna tonight she strings me up by my entrails? I can't be gallivanting around Washington with you."

It hurt to hear her say the name. It was the reassurance of who Emma was and where she came from that I didn't need. And she called her mother by her given name, just as Bella had done with Renee and Charlie.

"I will have you home by dinner," I promised.

"Oh no, sir. _I _will have _you_ home by dinner. This guy just got her driver's license and she will be doing the chauffeuring, thank you. But don't worry, Bowie, I'll get you to the church on time."

The teacher walked into the classroom. "Meet me at my car after school in the parking lot," she said.

"Which one is yours?"

"It's a classic. You can't miss it," she said with a smile and turned to face the front of the room.

***

When I walked out of the building, I scanned the parking lot for an old Chevy truck, colored more with rust than paint. I knew that's what I was looking for. A classic. Bella's truck. It had to be. The past two days had been positively dripping with coincidence and irony, so this was the next logical move.

I saw her before I saw the car. She must have been leaning up against it but it was hard to get past her figure and the way she looked, laughing, happy, beautiful, as she exchanged casual conversation with her peers. She caught my eye and waved. I smiled and began making my way towards her. My step faltered when I realized what car was hiding behind her.

A classic indeed.

"This is yours? Do you know what this is?" I asked her.

"Oh this old thing? It's a 1966 Mustang Shelby GT350. With a 289 V8 engine," she added with a smirk.

"And this is your car because…?"

"Because I'm into American Muscle. I like old cars. But I like to drive fast. The Shelby does right by me."

Be still, my unbeating heart.

"My dad's a mechanic," she added as explanation.

"Ok Speed Racer, let's go, "I said as I reached for the passenger door handle of the beautiful machine.

"Where to Miss Daisy?" Emma asked, climbing into the car.

"To the stars," I whispered inaudibly. Oh dear God I hope it was inaudibly. It just slipped out! I watch too many movies, I couldn't stop myself from finishing the line. I prayed she wouldn't pick up on the allusion. "Head out to the highway and we'll stop when we see something suitable for a birthday celebration," I said.

She said nothing, buckled her seatbelt, and began to back out of the parking spot. As we waited in traffic to exit the lot, she dropped her hand on to mine and gripped it tightly. "Emma, I—" I began to protest but she cut me off.

"I'll never let go, Jack." With a wink, she threaded her fingers through mine and turned to look straight ahead through the windshield.


	4. If music be the food of love, play on

"So tell me about your family," I said to Emma, gazing down at our entwined fingers. I wanted to pull away but she had a death grip on me. I didn't want to break her fingers trying to remove mine from her grasp. The feeling of it was incredible, of course, the heat of her hand tingling across my skin. I felt… plugged in, like she was radiating electricity into me. But I didn't want to lead her on. We were just friends.

"It's small," she said. "My mom was an only child, and my dad has two sisters who I don't see very often. I have Grandpa Billy in La Push and Grandpa Charlie in Forks, and my Grandma Renee lives in Phoenix with her husband Phil. Like I said, my dad's a mechanic, a great one. He makes a pretty decent living restoring old cars and doing repairs at his shop. I basically grew up in the shop, moving cars and helping out when I was as young as 8 or 9. I like to see how things work. I can rebuild a carburetor in like, an hour." She shrugged.

"And your mother?" I tried to keep the stress out of my voice, but I was so close to learning about Bella's life that I could've burst from the prospect.

"She's an author. She writes children's books. It gave her a really flexible schedule when I was a kid and she was able to work from home and spend a ton of time with me. Maybe more time than necessary. I think I mentioned the doting. She babies me, and she almost had an aneurism when I passed my driver's test this morning. It's hard for her to let go."

I let that sink in. Gosh why would it ever be hard for her to let go? It couldn't be because she was abandoned by the person she loved the most in her tender adolescence. Her issues, and consequently, Emma's issues, weren't entirely my fault.

Oh wait, yes they were.

And a children's book author? Of course, it's classic Bella. It made sense.

"So if your mom loves kids so much, why are you an only child?" I asked. I was prying, I could feel it, but I was so curious, and she didn't seem to think my interest was strange.

"Evidently I was as difficult as a newborn as I am now. My mom was in this really painful and violent labor for a long time and she kept refusing surgery because she trusted that I 'wasn't trying to hurt her' and finally they had to do an emergency C-section because I almost killed her. Her uterus was shot to shit after I had my way with it," Emma chuckled.

The thought of Bella in pain was harrowing, it turned my stomach, I couldn't linger on it for too long. I forced myself to think about something else.

I looked at the dashboard and saw we were coasting at 71 MPH. Emma caught me staring. "I told you I like to drive fast. I'm too impatient for speed limits." She looked like she belonged in that little seat, she was relaxed and confident like she had been driving for years, not hours.

"I like it," I told her.

"I don't make you nervous? Aren't you scared?" she asked.

"I'm not afraid of you," I chided.

"Well you really shouldn't have said that."

She pinned her foot to the floor and the speedometer hiked up past 100. I casually rested back in my seat and faked a yawn. Emma tightened her grip around my hand as the little needle crept up to 110. She glanced over at me, and her face fell.

"Not even a little scared?" she fished.

"Not of your driving." Trying to get the message to her, I lightly tried to ease my hand from her grasp and she flicked her eyes to the console where our arms were resting.

_Don't._

"What was that?" I asked her.

"I didn't say anything."

I tried again, a bit more forcefully, to pull my hand away from hers. She relaxed her fingers as if to let me, and then I heard it again.

_Please don't take your hand away_, she thought sadly.

Without thinking, I gathered her fingers back into mine again and rested our joined fists back on the center console.

_Good_, she thought.

Her face betrayed none of this as she concentrated on the road.

How? How had I heard her once and now again and never in between? Surely she was still thinking at this very moment, so why couldn't I hear it? This was more interesting than Bella even. I heard not a peep out of Bella's head in the year we were together, and yet I catch glimpses into Emma's mind every so often. What would I hear next? When would I hear it? I couldn't wait to find out.

I decided in that second that I liked Emma very much. Not in the way I liked- loved- Bella, but enough that I'd try to be her friend. I'd let her get closer to me than any human ever had, besides her mother of course. Friends. What a novel concept.

"Pull in here," I said, pointing to a strip mall parking lot.

"What's here?"

"Music store." So we were just friends. And I'm a century and half year old vampire. But I'm still not above trying to impress girls.

***

We walked into the huge music store together, but not holding hands. This was an excellent establishment, it was two stories tall, they had instruments of all kinds for sale and they offered lessons, and it was the kind of place that encouraged testing out the equipment, which is always nice.

We wandered around, touching mandolins and ukuleles and banjos, picking random strings and asking "getting to know you" questions. My heart had lurched when I asked her middle name.

"Grace," she said frowning.

"That's very pretty, why the face?"

"I think it was a jinx. My mom, she's terribly clumsy. Like, awful. She can't walk across a flat surface without falling down. And she was worried that she would pass it on to me and I'd be this disabled human who trips on a grain of sand. So she wanted to be able to "bestow grace upon" me in the only way she could. Corny. And it didn't work."

I ached inside. I wanted to curl into a ball and ride out the pain until I felt capable of functioning again. Instead, I simply said, "Well, I like it," and continued walking beside her.

We stopped when we reached a beautiful baby grand piano.

"Do you play?" Emma asked me, gauging my response to the gorgeous instrument.

"A little," I answered casually. Ever the pool shark. Piano shark? "Do you?" I asked her.

"A _very_ little. I'm good with my hands so I have the basics down. But I'm not so up on the melody and harmony and artistic part of it all. I'm too analytical I think. Will you play for me?"

I grinned. "Of course." I sat down on the piano bench and she surprised me, as usual, by scooting in next to me. "A Debussy fan, eh?" I began to lightly tap out Clair de Lune, then weave intricate melodies in beneath it. It hurt less now, hearing the song, that I knew it in a context other than Bella, even if it was her own daughter.

"Yes," she whispered. I could feel her eyes on me as I labored over the keyboard. "Give it to me, Claude."

I chuckled. She turned her head forward and I watched her from my peripheral vision. Closing her eyes, she laid her hands gently on the underside of the keyboard and tilted her head slightly to the side. Her brows furrowed like she was deep in thought.

I heard nothing.

"Penny for your thoughts? Though I imagine they're worth much more."

"You're phenomenal. And you know it, don't you? 'I play a bit.' What a clown. Me, I'm just… I'm trying to feel the music. When I put my hands on the piano I can feel the chords vibrating in me, and it's like… don't laugh. It's like the music is alive. Alive in me, and it's… moving and transcendental. I just like it."

"I wouldn't laugh at that. It was very beautiful," said, moving into a different tune.

"Chopin. I love this nocturne," She said quietly.

I was nearly astonished. I shouldn't have been. She was something new at every turn. She swayed lightly as I worked my way through the song. When I seamlessly slid into Puccini, she tentatively reached out and stroked a few keys in time with the song, mumbling Italian under her breath.

"I'm sorry, you speak Italian?" I jibed.

"No," she said, looking embarrassed and withdrawing her hands. "I just know the words to that opera, it's one of my favorites."

"Oh I wasn't making fun! Don't stop, I like playing with you."

"I'm terrible and you're the most gifted person on the planet. I don't deserve to sit next to you. You're like… a 1969 split window Corvette and I'm the Ford Pinto that broke down in front of your house and is about to explode onto your lawn."

I laughed at her obscure reference, and ended the sonata I was in. "I want to hear you play." I really did want to hear it. I was so interested in every facet of her.

"No! You don't show up at the Iron Chef with a tuna salad! That's what I feel like right now!"

"Please?" I nudged her lightly with my elbow. "Pretty please?" I dazzled her a bit.

"Ugh, I hate you," Emma said, lazily plunking out a chord. I sat back and took my hands from the keys. She began going through warm up exercises like a kid in a music lesson and rolled her eyes at me.

Her demeanor changed and she looked down at her hands seriously as she began to spread her fingers over a tune.

In the nearly 150 years that I've been on this earth, I have never wanted to die more than when I heard her coaxing that song from the ivories.

My lullaby. Bella's lullaby.

My throat tightened and I clenched my fists so hard I thought my fingers might break off. I struggled to maintain my cool façade as my own melody was played back to me through a virtual stranger's hands. It was strangling me. A song I hadn't heard in so long, one that I never wanted to hear again.

Yet there it was.

"Where… ah, where did you learn that?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level, while everything in me was aching to shout and cry.

"My mom. She used to sing it to me to put me to sleep when I was a baby. After I learned the piano, I figured out how to play it for her," she said with closed eyes and through this concentration. "I think she made it up," Emma continued. "I never heard it anywhere else."

Of course not.

Abruptly, I pulled her hands from the keys. "Let's try something else now, ok?" I choked out.

She must have read the alarm in my face. "Ok, whatever you want."

We hurried away from the piano.

***

I was able to cool off a bit walking through the giant music store. The pain was still throbbing in my chest, but if I concentrated hard enough on something else, I could almost ignore it. I couldn't just leave now. If I went home I would wallow, and everyone there would pity me for it and blame Emma. I told Alice I was going out with the human after school and she had taken my car home for me. I'm certain that she spread the news to the rest of my family and I didn't want to have to deal with their opinions… which I would hear, even if they didn't choose to voice them.

Emma stopped in front of a Fender plugged into an amp. "Ok, show me what you got," she said, picking up the guitar and pushing it towards me.

"I don't play guitar, Emma," I said flatly.

"Well, I don't play piano, Edward, but you forced me to and now you've got a Sour Sally face on. I'm sorry that my shitty musical prowess made you so grumpy, but you should probably shake it off now. So let's see it, Eddie Van Halen," she grinned.

I glowered at her.

"I said I wouldn't expect you to answer. I didn't agree to not call you that at all." I gave her a menacing glare and she stuck her tongue out at me. I began to pluck out the first easy guitar song that came to my head.

"Hey, hey, hey," Emma stopped me. I looked at her quizzically and she pointed to a sign on the wall that clearly read _**NO**__ STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN_.

"No stairway? Denied." I muttered, and fumbled my way through a frightening rendition of Hendrix's "Foxy Lady." Emma clapped and howled as I embarrassed myself in front of people who were no doubt real guitarists and probably worried about the damage I was inflicting on the Stratocaster.

"Woohoooo! Yeah Edward!" Emma hooted from her seat in front of me. I could feel my bad mood slipping away.

"Are you through enjoying my humiliation?"

"Not even a little bit, but we can go anyway." She put a hand up for me to pull her out of the chair. I hesitated. It would be very ungentlemanly of me to just leave her there, but I didn't want to give her the wrong idea about our relationship, or encourage the physical contact that she had no qualms about. She looked up at me expectantly and chivalry won this round.

When she was on her feet, she dug her fingers into my hand and maintained contact as we headed towards the exit. "Can you sit tight a minute? I gotta pee." Her spoken thoughts surprised me less and less but I was still taken aback a bit by her forwardness.

"Of course."

She ducked into the bathroom and I walked over the cash register to pick her up a little gift. It was the girl's birthday, she needed something. I picked out a little sterling silver guitar, cast in the image of the very same one I had just publicly desecrated, strung to a keychain, and it seemed perfect: a reminder of today and a decoration for her car. I had the cashier box it and tie it up with a little red satin bow. She walked out of the ladies' room just as I was pocketing the package.

"Ready?"

I nodded and we walked to the Mustang, where I absently reached for the driver's side door. "Oh," her face fell a bit. "Did you want to drive?"

"No, I was just… I was getting the door for you." I said, chagrinned. I forgot that women don't like that anymore. Blasted empowerment.

"How sweet. Thank you," she said, sliding behind the wheel.

The ride home was filled with friendly conversation. She told me about growing up and making mistakes and how her "lack of mental filter" put her foot in her mouth on too many occasions to count. I loved hearing her talk. As only the second person I'd ever encountered whose thoughts I didn't have undeterred access to, it was so fascinating to hear her voice them in the way she interpreted them. She put such an interesting spin on everything. Finally, we were back in town.

"Should I drop you off at school?" Emma asked.

"I gave Alice my keys at lunch, you could take me to my home, if that's alright."

"Oh. Of course." I gave her the address, warning her to keep her eyes open for the hidden turn onto my street, and settled back in the seat for the final leg of our trip. When she was idling outside the house, I reached into my pocket.

"I got you something." I looked into her face, so very like Bella's, and waited for the backlash. Bella didn't like gifts.

"A present?!" She squealed and I smiled, nodding. "Well, make with it, Cullen, I'm getting older every second here!"

_I'm not_, I thought wryly as I passed her the little box. "It's nothing, really. Just a little something for your birthday. I noticed you didn't have one." I sort of delighted in her excitement. I do love giving gifts, especially to people who are good at receiving them.

"Don't trivialize my gift. I love presents!" She pulled the ribbon and it fell away as she dug into the box. "Edward! How beautiful! Oh it's perfect and I love it!" In a fluid movement, she threw her arms up around my neck and pulled herself up to me, laying her hot cheek against my icy one and wrapping me in an unexpected hug.

I reached out and gently tapped her back in reciprocation, taking care not to bruise her.

_Kiss me_.

I knew I had heard her thoughts, but only because I could feel her lips, motionless, as her cheek was still pressed to mine. I gently began to draw her away from me.

_Kiss me, Edward, Please. For the love of God put your mouth on me_.

"Emma," I started, looking into those chocolate pools of emotion.

_Stop talking, stop looking at me, and kiss me, Edward, please_.

"Emma, I've got to go in, I'm sure Esme's prepared dinner," I lied smoothly. She lifted herself from me and smiled, again betraying none of what I had heard in her mind.

"Ok, have a good night. Thank you for the keychain!"

"Of course. I'll see you tomorrow. Happy birthday."

"Thanks," she said as I climbed out of the car. I walked slowly up the sidewalk mulling over what had just happened. She's so honest, so true, and yet when I could hear her thoughts I didn't see any of the same distress in her face. It was very odd.

Esme was smirking when I walked through the door. "Hi Edward."

"Esme," I nodded.

"Tell me about her," Esme begged.

"Not yet. Soon though. I promise." I brushed a kiss on her cheek and took the stairs up to my room.

My thoughts stayed with Emma. Why did she like me so much? Why was she so persistent? Didn't it bother her when she felt my cold, hard skin? Didn't she think something had to be wrong? Her actions implied no impurity, really. All she had done was hold my hand and hug me when I gave her a gift. But I hadn't had any kind of real physical contact in so long, and let alone with a human, it was shocking to me, and happening very fast.

But I really did like her. She was Bella in so many ways, but also very uniquely Emma, and I was enthralled by the way she blended my past and my present. Maybe I would have been drawn to her even if it weren't for the Bella factor, but I suppose that's a moot point.

As it stood now, she was somehow… easing my pain over Bella and being with her was encouraging a kind of companionship that I had never had. I'm a vampire, I don't have human friends. But Emma seems to blur the lines of everything she touches so that it's always just a bit too hazy to tell what's right and what's wrong.


	5. Blurry

"Can I touch it?" Emma asked suddenly during chemistry lab one day the following week.

"I'm sorry?" I said, taken aback, nearly dropping our Bunsen burner.

"Your hair," she offered, "can I touch it?"

I laughed and tipped my head towards her and she ran her fingers through the tousled locks. I held in a little sigh of contentment. "Why, exactly, are we doing this?"

"It's gorgeous. You're like the love child of Patrick Dempsey and Frederic Fekkai. And I'm very tactile. I wanted to see what it felt like."

It felt like heaven. Her warm little hands sifting through my hair, her nails lightly tickling my scalp, I had to close my eyes so she wouldn't see them rolling back in my head.

"It's so soft. What do you even put in here?" Emma asked, reluctantly withdrawing her hands.

"Nothing," I said as I righted my posture.

"Figures. You do nothing and get this beautifully deconstructed look of careful disarray, and I spend six or seven hours a day in front of the mirror to get this," she gestured around her face and hair, "and look maybe an eighth as good as you do. Injustice."

"Emma, you're breathtaking," I told her, returning my attention to the lab. I was grateful she didn't know that I didn't need to breathe anyway, I felt like that would have lessened the compliment.

She mulled it over for a moment. "Thanks," she said simply and then, "Do you want to hang out today after school?"

"Yes," I responded automatically. We hadn't seen each other outside of school since her birthday last week and I was craving her company for longer than chemistry had to offer. I immediately started forming an agenda for the afternoon that made me tense.

I wanted her to come home and meet my family. They had been begging for a glimpse of her and I felt like now was as good a time as any. We were staying in Seattle. Emma was, conceivably, my best friend. Why put it off when I planned on maintaining a relationship with her?

The tense part was, I suppose, just the natural anxiety and anticipation that came along with mixing my two worlds: as a vampire family man and a high school student. I hoped my family would like her, appreciate her, and make her feel welcome, and I hoped that she would accept them as well. I was a little weary about asking my family to put on the human charade in our home, but I know that they were eager to know Bella's daughter and would consider it worth the trouble.

"Would you like to come to my house after school?" I asked.

I paced in the foyer, waiting to hear the rumble of Emma's V8.

"Edward really, you're going to wear a hole into my Oriental runner, and that's from 1928. I will be very upset if you destroy it."

"Sorry Mom."

"I know you must be apprehensive about Emma coming to visit but I assure you we will be on our best behavior, and doesn't she already know Alice and Jasper? She will be nothing but comfortable."

It was true. Emma had met Alice and Jasper briefly on several occasions in the parking lot and hallways of school. Alice, of course, was desperately in love with her and was waiting for the OK from me to pounce and develop a deep friendship with Emma. Jasper regarded her as he did most every other human… from a distance safe enough that I could get between them if there was a problem.

Alice flitted down the stairs at that moment. "Can I play with you guys?"

"Of course," I told her.

We all stilled when we heard the sound of Emma's unmistakable exhaust manifold chugging down the street. I waited for her to knock on the door. When she did, I swung it open widely. "Hello, Emma, please come in."

She stepped into the house and I could see her awe as she took in our grandiose home.

_Gorgeous like you._

There it was again. I had begun to get used to catching pieces of her mind about once a day. Oddly enough, most often it was when her thoughts pertained to me, or even seemed directed at me. I would have to remember to talk to Carlisle about this later.

"Emma, this is my mother, Esme, and you know Alice."

Emma stepped towards Esme with her hand outstretched and a wide smile. Esme shot me an inquisitive look and I nodded once curtly, letting her know it was ok to shake Emma's hand. "Welcome to our home, Emma, I'm so glad to know you," Esme said warmly.

"I'm delighted to meet you as well, Mrs. Cullen. Your home is incredible, really, I think it's the nicest I've ever seen in real life," Emma said.

Esme chuckled. "Sweet girl, please call me Esme. And thank you, I do architecture and interior design, and I put a lot of work into this place. I'm glad you like it."

_Gorgeous, and what a nice young woman. I'm so happy you brought her here, Edward_, Esme thought.

We settled into the living room, Emma and I on the couch and Alice on the easy chair, to do one of Emma's self proclaimed favorite activities: watch TV and make snarky comments.

I positively adored listening to her unfiltered thoughts, spoken aloud. So honest. She especially loved to make running commentary on reality show contestants who she said had "it coming to them for putting themselves in a glass fishbowl." I could have listened to her all night. I nearly did. We were drawn out of our witty banter when Carlisle came downstairs. Emma stood up and met him in the living room.

"Hi, you must be Dr. Cullen, I'm Emma Black," she said, offering her right hand and that unrivaled winning smile. Carlisle returned the grin and shook her hand, looking over her head at me briefly. "Sorry if it's rude of me not to wait to be introduced. Edward's told me so much about you and I really admire what you've done. You know, taking in orphans, saving lives, that whole bit. I'm very excited to meet you," she apologized.

"Not at all," Carlisle was melting into a puddle right in front of her. "Call me Carlisle, Emma. I'm so happy you came to visit."

_Well I adore her, Edward. She's… disarming_.

I nodded once. At least it wasn't just me. Emma was unique and charming in a way that appealed to everyone, not just the guy that was in love with her mother.

"Sorry to skip out on you Emma, I should have come down sooner but I was involved in a project in my office. Esme and I are headed out to do some shopping at a little antique store I spotted the other day. You'll have to come by again soon," Carlisle said.

"I'd love to," Emma replied.

Carlisle and Esme left, and Alice said "Actually I have some work to get to as well. Italian is killing me, I really have to study. It was great hanging out with you, Emma."

_Mi piace lei molto, Edward. Adesso, tu hai tempo da solo con lei, perche ho studiare per italiano, mi scusi_, Alice thought.

As if I didn't already know Alice's Italian homework was a contrived excuse to give me time alone with Emma, though I wasn't exactly sure why. Alice bounded up the stairs, and it was just Emma and I.

Emma settled back onto the couch and slipped off her shoes, drawing her legs up and placing her feet in my lap. She leaned into the leather cushion and sighed. "Your family is marvelous, Edward. I'm half in love with them already."

I smiled, eyeing her little feet resting on my thighs. "I think they like you too." I tried to think of a smooth way to break the contact without hurting her feelings. She whimpered lightly and I looked at her. Emma's eyes were beginning to close, she was falling asleep. I relaxed, thinking there was no harm in our touching if she wasn't even conscious. Besides, it was just her feet. I turned the TV to news so I could catch up on the day while Emma slept.

About twenty minutes later, she woke up.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Why not, what, Emma."

She mumbled something incoherent. I brought my eyes to her face, and it was clear she was not awake. Talking in her sleep. Yet another Bella-ism.

"I just don't get it. I was right there. And you said I was breathtaking. Why not?"

She wanted to know why I hadn't kissed her. Poor girl. I decided we would have this conversation, even if she wasn't really present. "I'm sorry, Emma, it's not you," I said, bemused.

"Edward?" she asked.

"Yes love?"

"Are you gay?"

I laughed silently until my body was shaking. "No, love."

"Do you really think I'm breathtaking?"

"I would never lie to the most honest person I know," I told her.

"You have too many boundaries," she murmured decisively. "I'm tactile. But you always want to get away when I touch you."

"Not true," I said, taking one of her feet in my hands and kneading it gently.

She moaned quietly. "I do not respect these boundaries. Keep doing that."

I obliged, and she drifted back into wordless sleep. Moments later, she was shivering. I knew I should have raised the thermostat, I can never tell what's comfortable for humans. Plus my crypt keeper icicle hands couldn't be helping. I eased out from under her and went to grab a blanket from the closet.

When I returned, she had stretched out to the length of the couch and her teeth were chattering slightly. I spread the blanket over her, taking care to tuck it under her feet and folding it under her chin. I perched lightly on the edge of the couch and leaned over her stilled form, admiring the peaceful beauty that sleep brought to her face. She really was exquisite.

Her brows drew together, creating a little line between them like she was deep in thought, and ever so slowly she worked her arm out from under the blanket. I watched her, interested.

In a fluid movement she shot her arm up and caught it around my neck, pulling me down so I was laying almost directly on top of her. As I tried to decide on a course of action, she slid over and made room for me beside her, still pulling me down to her. "Please," she whispered, her eyes still closed. _Just lay with me Edward. I just want to feel you next to me. Please_.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I shouldn't have led her on. I knew how terrible a situation I was teetering on. But I had this desperate longing in me to know her better, something that drew me to her, and now even more than I wanted to hear about her mother, I wanted to know _her_ as a person… and I didn't want to hurt her feelings by rejecting her and scare her away from me with injured pride.

Not to mention the fact that I had such a hard time denying her when I could hear her thoughts. It felt like a rare gift and I didn't want to reject it by not complying. I settled myself in beside her so that we were face to face and watched her intently.

Her features relaxed and she used her arm that was still out of the blanket to tilt my head down a bit as she threaded her fingers into my hair, tugging on it gently. She arched her back out in a stretch, pressing her breasts flush against my chest, and then snuggled in close to me. Almost every part of our bodies, from head to toe, were touching.

My mind was shouting to break away from it but something else was keeping me frozen in place. The contact, the feeling of it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was almost otherworldly to have her warm, small body pressed into mine like this. I knew I should be pushing her away but physically I ached to get even closer to her.

My brain lost that round. I wrapped an arm around her, placing my hand gently at the small of her back, and held her against my marble body.

Emma had blurred the lines once more.

I wasn't sure if I ever wanted to see the boundary again.


	6. Stir the pot

I caught stray pieces of her dreams as she slept. My name, a picture, a feeling… nothing really concrete. I couldn't take my eyes off her, though. She looked less like her mother when she slept, much more just-Emma with her eyes closed. I took in a deep breath of her scent, the sweet, malevolent, delicious torture of it. This close, it wasn't an exact duplicate of Bella's. It had the same freesia high notes, but was much more complex towards the bottom, earthier, like vanilla and musk. Intoxicating, to say the least.

We laid there for nearly an hour, her cradled in my arms with her fingers in my hair, as I stared at her, obsessed. What was it that tied me to her this way? I knew that everything about our present situation was wrong. I shouldn't have been this close to her. I shouldn't have let her touch me like that. And I shouldn't be thinking about kissing her.

_Not ok_! My brain was screaming at me. _I know_! I wanted to shout back. Bella's daughter. What sort of depravity was this? How could I even entertain the thought of kissing Emma, when two decades ago I done the very same thing with her own mother?

I did what I could to push the thoughts away, but they lingered and haunted me. Does it matter whose daughter she is? Would I feel the same way if she was someone who I had just met in chemistry, whose lineage was of no interest to me? I contemplated it. I remembered the way she joked, her unabashed honesty, and how she rubbed heat into my hands the very first day I met her. I might have loved Emma under any circumstances.

The warring in my head continued. Wrong, because she was Bella's daughter. Right, because… well, it felt right. I couldn't decide which side was winning.

And I couldn't stop thinking about kissing her.

She whimpered lightly, adjusting her position, and settling back in tightly against my body.

I tried to remember what it was like, kissing fire. I tried to rationalize with my sense of reason. Shouldn't I at least know if I _could_ kiss Emma, so that maybe I would be able to stop the idea from running marathons in my head? If it was intolerable, at least I would know, and I could stop thinking about it. Surely I could withstand a simple test, no?

I decided there was no better time to try. Emma was unconscious, she would never even realize what had transpired. I would have my answer and I could put to bed the debauched thoughts I was having about this sweet girl who couldn't have been more wrong for me if she tried. I lowered my mouth to her cheek to give her the kiss that she so dearly wanted.

I kept an image of her, smiling and laughing, in the forefront of my mind to remind me that she was a person, and someone I cared for, not a snack. Painstakingly slowly, I pressed my mouth to the side of her face. With the contact I could feel the blood moving underneath her skin, and my jaw tensed. Quickly, I recalled the way she held my hand or chucked me under the chin, she was a human who treated me well and I needed her around… although I nearly did her in when I thought of how she called me "Eddie." _Not bad_, I thought, lifting my face from hers. _Maybe even good_.

She began to stir and I could tell she was waking up. I kept my eyes locked on her. She began to slowly slide her hand from my head, down my neck and along my bicep. She threaded her fingers into mine and opened her eyes.

_Do it again_.

I scrutinized her face. She was commanding me, and I heard it clear as a bell. I gazed into her eyes, now swimming with emotion.

_Please. Do it again_.

I remained still and said nothing. She rocked her hips slightly against mine, an unnecessary reminder of how inextricably close we were. Emma craned her neck slightly up to me.

I thought of the control I'd had a moment ago. I could have it again. It was just a kiss, and it was just her cheek. She looked at me expectantly and I brought my lips to her face once more.

I drew away slowly, and before I got out of striking range, she crushed her mouth on mine.

My mind raced. We were crossing a dangerous line and we couldn't go back after this. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I knew I had to stop, but in that moment, nothing in the world mattered to me except her hot tongue tracing the curve of my bottom lip.

"Emma…" I moaned a protest into her mouth. She took my bottom lip between hers and sucked on it gently. I used to have a brain. I used to have some semblance of judgment. No more.

Using the hand on her lower back, I pulled her even closer to me. I remembered idly an old saying at Catholic school dances… "leave enough room for the Holy Spirit between you." There was barely room for the thin layers of fabric that were our clothes between us.

She removed her hand from mine and brought it up to my face, tracing over my cheekbones and along my jaw and then threading it into the hair on the back of my head as she held me tight to her.

Abruptly, she tried to pull me up to a sitting position. I let her. She used the hand in my hair to tilt my face up to her to kiss as her other one worked its way down my chest… and she was straddling my lap.

Control. I had been thinking so much about my control that I hadn't given any thought to hers. And now I was drowning in it. I was malleable in her capable hands, and I considered that maybe I wanted her to undermine me. _NO!_ My mind revolted, _wrong, stop! Why are you letting this happen?_

Emma writhed in my lap.

_That's why_, I countered to my stupid, guilty, pensive brain.

I wondered why she wasn't curious about my stone-like skin, and then she shifted her weight once more and I was suddenly very aware that she was sitting on me, lined up in all the right places, so to speak, and I realized that there was a much more pressing issue to deal with.

Hard skin, yes. But harder cock.

There simply just wasn't a polite way to say it.

And here she was, gyrating on it, and the very last thing in the world I wanted to do was stop her. But I had to.

Then she started to unbutton her blouse.

I was dumbfounded as she took my hands and worked them up under her bra, which she quickly unhooked and discarded once my hands were on her. I may have been more 17-year-old boy in that moment than I ever had been before in my life… and I loved boobs.

I was awestruck by the way they moved and how her nipples hardened when I ran my thumbs over them. From then on out, I was sure to be a breast man, and Emma's were phenomenal.

My resolve was gone.

She tipped my head to the side and ran sloppy, wet kisses up and down my neck. I was crazy with need for her and I wished like hell I could do the same, but the proximity to her carotid artery presented too much a challenge for it.

Blood. Human. Emma. Dear Lord what was I doing? I had to put a stop to this but it was difficult to think when she was grinding herself against my erection. I wracked my brain for a way to end this without making her feel rejected or discarded… or at least that's what I told myself to buy time as she continued the exquisite dry humping.

"Emma?" I said against her jaw as I kissed it lightly. "Emma?"

"Mmm…" she mumbled as a reply.

"Emma as delightful as this is, and I do mean that genuinely," I started, punctuating with a gentle thrust. What had gotten into me? Behave, you dirty vampire. "Alice is upstairs and my parents could be back at any minute and this is just… not a good idea." Also, I might kill you and drink your blood in a lust fueled rampage, no big deal.

"I think it's a great idea," she said, lowering her hand to stroke my engorged dick through my pants. Dick? When did I start using dick in my internal monologue? Uncouth. Emma must be rubbing off on me. At least I still have enough class to refrain from making the obvious pun at "rubbing off on me."

"I know and… uhhh," Concentrate, you useless virgin, you need to get her off of you before this goes even farther. "Emma just… not today."

She thrust her breasts up into my face and continued to pet me.

It took every modicum of self control that I had ever had not to just say "what the fuck" and pull that nipple into my mouth. In slow, controlled movements I put my hands on her hips and lifted her off of me. This caused me immense physical pain. I was, quite literally, shaken by her. I kissed her lightly on the forehead, removing the contact with every other part of her body, and smiled against her soft skin, whispering, "You're a very bad girl."

She sighed in defeat and slowly stepped off the couch, still unabashedly naked from the waist up, stretching her arms out. My gaze was glued to her. She bent over, raising that perfectly formed ass skyward, picked up her shirt and bra, and proceeded to dress herself at an agonizing pace. I sat, unmoving, on the couch.

_Next time_, she thought, looking at me menacingly with a devious grin.

I gulped. Not even for comedic effect, but because my mouth filled with venom watching her and I was actually worried about how I would fair against her in round two, her hormones versus my will... I got the sinking feeling that this frail little human was somehow much stronger than me.

***

The next day, I waited anxiously for her to get to chemistry. She sauntered in smirking as she took her seat next to me. "How goes it, Altar Boy?"

"You're funny," I deadpanned.

"You're prude," she countered.

I laughed. It was true. I was prude.

She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek. "Is this too much? I don't want to violate you…"

I nodded solemnly and offered her a handshake instead, which she took and laced her fingers through. I immediately began trying to escape.

"Oh we're not past the touch barrier yet?" she mused, "you at least owe me this after the way you molested me last night."

"HA!" I nearly shouted.

"I'm not the one who goes around kissing girls in their sleep, that's all I'm saying."

"Yes, clearly I was the aggressor yesterday._ I_ took off _my _clothes and manhandled you."

"As long as we're on the same page." She gave my hand a little squeeze.


	7. Floored

We spent nearly every day together for the next month. Despite a few hard-fought battles, Emma had managed to bust down my precious barricades and set up shop within my walls of Jericho. I was no longer Boundaries Guy… I was Emma's Guy.

I would take her out after school, to get something to eat (for her, of course) or to go shopping (she let me spend money on her, which I adored even though she called me "Eddie Money" when I did) or just "hanging out" at my house (she never invited me to hers, and I never pushed the issue, for obvious reasons).

My family was absolutely devoted to her. Alice squealed every time Emma showed up after a shopping trip with a new hair product (they love this "Fekkai" gent) and they spent hours in her bathroom doing makeovers and trying on clothes. Esme and Carlisle loved her bright, honest altruism and even Jasper was beginning to get more comfortable with her, he joked and smiled and didn't even flinch when she touched his arm while speaking to him (that "tactile" girl could've lost a hand).

There was a painfully close call when she and Alice were fashion designing, a hobby of theirs where they took a designer piece and had to figure out a way to make it a better look for the other. The challenge lay mostly in Alice's size and Emma's, well, top-heavy physique, but the two of them rather enjoyed designing for the other's figure and I often watched them working together, because it made my heart happy to see them harmoniously coexisting, my worlds united. Emma had an eye for design because her mind worked spatially, and Alice had taught her the basics of sewing, Emma quickly picked up on it and became rather good at creating garments as she was very skilled with her hands.

It was a yellow Gucci jacket, and it was "masterful" according to Emma, but Alice's small frame got lost in the wide shoulders. Alice stood like a mannequin in the living room as Emma pinned around the back of the jacket, and Jasper and I lounged lazily on the couches. It only took one slip of her usually careful hand. I watched as if it were slow motion, the straight pin sliding into Emma's forefinger. Alice stopped breathing instantaneously and I began to map out my options: do I tackle Jasper to the floor? Do I grab Emma and run? I tried to gauge the situation through my siblings' thoughts but received mostly just a tenor of panic.

"Shit," Emma breathed. So fast I almost didn't see it happen, she stuck the finger, pin and all, into her mouth, dragging the head of the pin against her row of bottom teeth where it caught and slipped from her flesh. She plucked the offending object from her mouth and wrapped her perfect pink lips around the bleeding finger.

I stared at her in awe. Seconds that felt like hours passed and she pulled the finger from her mouth with a popping sound. Not a drop of blood was spilt.

"Close call," Alice said in relief, the stress leaving her face.

"I know," Emma agreed. "This jacket would have been ruined if I bled on it."

***

I didn't want to fall in love with Emma. And I never thought it would happen so fast, but I guess that's just how I do things.

I was in such a strange place. It was like Bella and Emma were neighboring countries and I had a foot in each camp. Or perhaps that I had been born in Bella country but emigrated to Emma's and felt some sort of loyalty to the former but it didn't rival my devotion to the latter. There was no doubt in my mind that what I had felt for Bella was real all those years ago, but now, with Emma, it was just as real… and different. Better.

I was so serious with Bella. Everything was dire and dramatic and Emma was easy and funny, she made me forget my near constant bitterness. I felt protective of Bella, and though I wanted to be with her, it was different than my desire to be with Emma. I was painfully aware of Emma's proximity to me at any given time, it was like electricity through my veins when she was near. I didn't just want to be with Emma, I _wanted_ Emma.

While Bella had awakened my long-dead emotions, Emma brought me to life. I laughed with Emma, I relaxed, I was just able to_ be_. I had never felt a physical need for someone the way I had with her and it was as exhilarating as it was frightening. I never spent my time trying to save Emma from me… or herself, for that matter.

It was just not the same. With Emma, I was able to feel like I had left the Bella part of me in Forks and I was freed from her haunting memory. With Emma, I was happy.

I was a completely different man. The person that had loved Bella was no more, and I was wholly in love with Emma… this was the reason I was able to justify my passion for the daughter of a girl I used to love. I was not the same person then. Bella stopped existing for me when I left, and my love for Emma was something that I'm certain I would have found even if her connection to Bella never drew me in. Her parentage was simply a terrible coincidence that I could overlook when I put it next to my love for her. There wasn't a part of me left that longed for Bella. I was Emma's, unconditionally and irrevocably.

This, of course, was a horrifying complication. I couldn't spend eternity with Emma anymore than I could with Bella, all the same obstacles were still in play, and even more so in that I could never be with her family. I cringed at the mental image of that introduction.

***

On a crisp October afternoon, we were walking in the woods near school, hand in hand. I'd quickly dropped my aversion to being touched by her, it was impossible to uphold the façade when everything in me longed for her closeness. We spoke, as we often did, very candidly about life in general.

"Do you think there's a heaven?" Emma asked.

"Yes," I lied smoothly "someone like you doesn't just disappear when they die. They have to continuing torturing others somewhere," I dropped a kiss on her lips and quickly pulled away. I had learned the hard way that lingering in too intimate an embrace with Emma was dangerous for both of us… which was why I kept our dates at public places and our kisses chaste. I knew she was getting frustrated with me because I'd catch a thought every now and again. Oh and also because she told me regularly.

"Do that again," she commanded.

"Nope," I popped my mouth on the "p" and took a stride ahead of her.

"I hate you and your delicate sensibilities. Let's walk out to The Point," she suggested, referring to Overlook Point, a spot accessible to cars and Seattle's version of an antiquated Lover's Lane.

"Oh? What do you think is going to happen if we go out there?" I teased.

"I figure there's people fornicating. We can at least watch considering we never get past first base."

"Voyeurism, Emma? I had no idea."

"I don't know what I'm into Edward, you won't let me try anything!" she yelled. I looked over her full, pouted lips and face flushed from annoyance.

"You're very beautiful when you hate me."

She sighed. "I don't hate you. I love you," she said simply.

I stopped walking.

"Sorry," she began, "You don't have to say it back, I'm just word vomiting." She began to walk again and I stayed put, yanking her towards me and catching her face in my hands.

I brought my mouth down to hers and felt her breathing hitch as I lowered it to her lips and kissed her like I meant it. With my hands on either side of her head I pushed my tongue against hers and she twined her arms up around my neck.

Too soon, I pulled away from her.

"Was that my reward for being emotionally competent?"

"I love you." I answered. "I don't love you 'too.' I love you first, and I wish I'd gotten to say so," I spoke quietly into her ear, still clutching her face. "I love you, Emma."

"Then I guess I love you, too." She dropped her head to my shoulder, and let me hold her.

***

As we walked continued to walk through the woods, we said little. I was lost in my head, thinking about what had just transpired. I did love her, I knew it for certain, but it was so wrong of me to tell her. I was holding a secret of the largest sort over her head like a guillotine, and I knew if the thin line holding it up ever snapped, our relationship would be decapitated.

She didn't love me. How could she, when she didn't even know what I was? I felt terrible for what had just happened, and even worse for keeping something of this magnitude from a girl who I (now openly) loved.

Would it change anything if she knew? Could I simply tell her? Surely she understood that I was different, she had touched my cold, hard skin herself, though she never let on that she noticed I was granite. Would she… accept me if she knew? I couldn't risk it. Both for the chance of losing her and the potential danger it would put my family in.

"You're quiet," she commented. _Please say something_, her mind begged, _anything so this doesn't get weird. I can't lose you_.

"Sometimes you have a filter," I blurted without thinking. She looked at me quizzically. "Sometimes you are thinking things that you don't say."

_How do you know_?

"I can see it in your face." Had I just answered her thought? Oh no. Maybe she thinks I was just continuing my verbal diarrhea. Perfect companion to Emma's word vomit. It was like we were soul mates.

You know, if I had a soul.

The more time I spent with her, the easier it was to hear her thoughts, though it was really only the ones that were directed at me. It was like she was willing me to do something, and with her mind she imposed it on me. That was when the workings of her brain were the clearest. It made the edges between her spoken words and the thoughts I stole from her head very indistinct, and I'd caught myself nearly responding to her mind on more than one occasion.

"So what was I thinking, then?"

"How should I know? Maybe if you didn't wear emotion on your face like Geisha makeup it wouldn't be so easy to tell when you were holding back."

"That's an obscure simile. And Geisha makeup is made of nightingale shit. Are you saying I look shitty when I think?"

"Yes."

"And also that I'm a Japanese hooker?"

"Yes."

"Best boyfriend ever." She reached her hand out for a high five.

My chest tightened when she said the word. Boyfriend. How ridiculous of me to get so elated at the prospect of commitment when she's offered me so much more already. But I delighted in it. Emma's boyfriend.

She turned to face me. "You look like a goon, stop smiling."

Emma, poor Emma, blessed with so many qualities that were uniquely hers couldn't fight off Bella's clumsiness, and when she took her eyes off the path, she missed a root, raised up from the dirt, and toppled over it.

I reacted on instinct to save her, debated for a second too long about how displaying superhuman reflexes would go over, and wound up beneath her as she tumbled into the brush. She landed on top of me with the wind knocked out of her, struggling to breathe.

"Emma, are you ok?"

She nodded, a bit frantically, trying to get air back into her lungs. "Ok, it's alright, relax," I said soothingly, rubbing circles on her back with my palm. "Just give it a second, Emma, you'll be ok, shh…" I kissed her gently on the cheek and stroked her hair. Slowly, her breathing returned to normal and she eased her head onto my chest, the length of her body pressed into mine.

We said nothing for quite a while, lying on the forest floor, listening to the sounds of the woods and each other's breath. Emma sighed contentedly and I wrapped my arms around her slight frame. Moments later, she brought her chin up onto my breastbone and looked at me. I tucked an arm behind my neck and tilted my head to see her better.

"Edward?" I raised my eyebrows in recognition. "I think I love you first." I smiled and she crawled up my chest to kiss me.

She put a lot into that kiss. I could feel the passion behind it, like she was trying to prove it to me that she loved me. I kissed her back and met her for emotion, slow but fierce and powerful. She moaned lightly into my open mouth and turned her head up so that I was kissing along her jaw. I ran my hands down the length of her torso and slid them under her sweater. It wasn't anything we hadn't done before, I rationalized in my head, and I had controlled myself the first time, plus everyday it got easier to fight down my thirst when I was with Emma, I simply loved her more than the song of her sweet blood. All this was still someday secondary to my elation at the revelation that we were in love, and I wanted to deny her nothing.

She gasped in excitement when I rolled her nipple between my thumb and forefinger, and she thrust her neck towards my face, desperate for more contact.

I thought I had it under control.

I thought wrong.

The sound of her hot blood slurping noisily through her artery and the feel of it pulsing beneath my lips was too much. I sensed myself losing my grip and I had to do something before I killed her.

I growled and threw her off of me.

Literally, picked her up, and threw her ten feet in the other direction.

I turned away to regain my restraint. When I looked back at her, I realized there were two monsters in the forest.

Glaring at me wildly, Emma stormed the distance between us. She reached up and swiftly slapped me across the face. I was awed, and I wondered how badly she'd hurt her hand.

"What the FUCK is wrong with you!?" she demanded.

"Emma, I-"

"Are you out of your fucking mind?!" she slapped me a second time. I wanted to laugh at her ferocity and her attempts to hurt me but I was baffled by her behavior and, frankly, she was a bit frightening. Animalistic, vicious even.

"Emma," I tried to make her listen to reason, "Emma I can't… I can't make love to you."

"And why the fuck not?!" she shouted so loudly, birds chattered and flew out from the tree above her.

"It's complicated, Emma, I-"

"Oh, EVERYTHING is just SO complicated for you with your double entendre and your sneaky secrets and how you say something but mean something else entirely. Forgive me, _Edward_, I'm so sorry I'm not smart enough to keep up with the intricate workings of your mind, perhaps you'd like to throw me across the forest again? I don't think I'm entirely concussed right now, let's see what we can do about that, eh? EVERYONE knows maiming your girlfriend in the woods is a lot easier than explaining your erectile dysfunction!"

She had tested my last nerve. I gritted my teeth and a feral growl slipped out. "I. Do. Not. Have. Erectile. Dysfunction!" I bellowed at her, inches away from her face.

She went toe-to-toe with me, fearless. "Well then what, WHAT is it Edward!? WHAT?!"

"I'm a VAMPIRE, Emma!" I shouted.

Well, that solved that. Way to go, Edward. I always knew you could keep a cool head under pressure and definitely not lose your temper when a human, a veritable child, questioned your manhood. Well done.

Emma was silent.

She took a step back from me, her eyes wide.

She let out a giggle.

"Oh, honey… did you think you were passing for human?"


	8. The taming of the shrew

Emma's POV

Edward said nothing.

I looked at him expectantly, swallowing another condescending laugh. "Really, Edward."

His mouth hung open with shock. I stepped gingerly towards him and slowly placed a hand under his chin, lifting and effectively closing up shop. I tentatively leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the strong line of his jaw. Taking a few paces back, I gave him an appraising look and let him process what he had just learned. And he thinks_ I'm_ the dense one.

"You knew… you're not… I'm…" he stammered ridiculously.

I nodded encouragingly. "Try to keep up," I whispered. His gaze drifted to the ground and I could almost hear him working out the logistics of our current situation. "You could at least TRY to make it look believable you know. You never eat, I see you tearing apart food to make it look like you did but it never touches your lips. You don't text during class or go to sporting events or get grounded or fall asleep in the library during study hall. That's what high school kids _do_, Edward. For someone who is so meticulous you do an excellent job of dropping the ball on that kind of shit." His brows knit together and he looked like he might implode.

"Hey," he brought his eyes back to me "I might still love you. Depending on how badly I'm bruised tomorrow." I rubbed the left cheek of my ass dramatically.

"You… how?" He begged.

"Honestly, Edward. I was raised on the Quileute reservation! You think I can't sniff out a bloodsucker? I knew it from the moment I touched you, that first day in class. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to ask… how _exactly_ is it that you get a hard-on, when you're already marble? Is it just like… a self-on? I mean I know you _do_, I've felt it knocking into me on the few occasions when I've manipulated you into some heavy petting but… I'm intrigued by the dynamics of this."

He just stared at me, wide-eyed.

"Can you say something intelligible? I didn't realize this was a monologue."

"You're not scared?" He finally choked out.

"Of you? Please. You won't even feel me up when I'm throwing myself at you. It's not very predatory behavior."

"I could kill you before you even saw me coming," he snapped.

"Yeah and you would have done it already. No one plays with their food for that long. Especially not someone who is a sworn enemy of foreplay like yourself."

"I'm a murderer, Emma," he stalked towards me with a menacing look, I'm sure what he thought was his most vampire-y face.

"Then do it." I tipped my head to the side and exposed the column of my throat. He reached me in two long, feline strides as a growl ripped from his chest. Bringing his mouth to my neck, he licked a languid stroke from my collarbone to my earlobe. "Furious, for sure. Big bad vampire. Do it again," I said running my hands through his hair.

"Why didn't you say something," he murmured into my skin as he peppered it with soft, wet kisses.

"Like what? Hey nice to meet you, are you a vampire? I heard about your kind on the Rez, and I think you might fit the bill. How do I know this? Oh my people are wolf people, obviously."

He stiffened, and not in a good way.

"Wolf people. The enemies who exist to destroy us."

"The very ones."

"Is this entrapment?" he asked, sliding a hand down to my ass.

"Is it working?" I asked back

"Yes. So why are you even here, right now, with me… when you and I are the Montagues and Capulets of the supernatural?"

"The reasons are twofold. First, I'm not supernatural. My peeps haven't been wolves in a long time, like a hundred years at least. Frankly I think it's just shit the old men say so they feel better about getting their asses handed to them by leeches in 1930 or whatever. And two… I'm very shallow. I liked what I saw. I wouldn't have cared if you were secretly a vacuum cleaner or… I dunno, had sex with babies, as long as I could get you to take me to prom. Well maybe not if you had sex with babies. I guess it depends if it was consensual…?" I mused.

He chuckled.

"That you're beautiful got your foot in the door. That you're decent and wonderful and perfect and you just so happen to love me… well that's what we call icing on the cake."

"I'd like to ice your cake," he whispered, licking the shell of my ear.

"Why Edward Cullen, did you just make a sexy joke? As much as I'd love to bask in this moment, I really do have some icing to do. If you recall, you shot-putted me across the woods and I hit my head on a tree, and I wasn't being facetious, I actually may have a concussion." I pushed him away from me, my previous rage relit.

"Oh Emma, we have to get you to Carlisle immediately. I'm so sorry. I didn't…" he put a cold hand on the back of my head.

"That feels good. I'm not going to your dad's, though, I'll be ok. Just keep your hand there."

"Don't be ridiculous, we have to make sure you're not injured!" His eyes frantically scanned my body for other contusions.

"Doctors are for pussies, I just need to walk it off. Rub some dirt in it. I usually heal pretty quickly. You know, when I'm not getting backhanded by mythology."

"Emma, I'm so sorry! I had to get you off of me, I was… I didn't want to hurt you!" he lamented.

"You wouldn't have."

"Oh, well you clearly know better than I do, thanks for the reassurance. I was going to _bite_ you Emma!" he roared.

"Maybe I'm into that."

"Really? You're_ into _venom coursing through your deadened veins, lighting your insides on fire until it burns up every shred of humanity you've ever had? You're_ into_ becoming a monster who cares about nothing more than bloodlust and sating its relentless thirst?"

"Wah, wah, wah… When did you become such a crybaby? It didn't happen, so let it go, Eddie Munster."

He couldn't help but smile. "You are, by and far, the most irritating person on the planet."

"Yeah, but who loves ya, baby?" I held out my hand, which he reached for, and we continued our walk through the woods as if he hadn't just had an earth shattering revelation. I'm not one for theatrics.

***

About a half an hour had passed, and we had yet to say another word. We just walked, linked by our fingers, each lost in our own thoughts. Mine, I'm certain, were much different than his. I was still riding the "he loves me" express and I had these shitty butterflies floating around my stomach like some kind of… girl. This was _so_ not me. But then why was I enjoying it so much?

While my heart was palpitating, my mind was deconstructing. I'm not stupid, I know this has a slim-to-none chance of actually working out. It's not like I could even bring him home to meet my parents. HA! My dad would LOVE that. He's a pretty smart cookie and he'd see the writing on the wall from a mile away. His precious girl, a leech lover. Edward wouldn't even make it through the door, Jake would chase him out with a loaf of garlic bread and a priest, and then he'd lower the boom and lock me in my room until I was too old for fun.

But my mom… well she'd be different. She doesn't judge. She's open-minded and has a good heart, and she would want me to be happy. And she doesn't buy into all the Quileute legendary garbage, she thinks they're cute little tales of make believe and she let Grandpa Billy tell them to me when I was a baby, but she treated them as bedtime stories, not as a torch passed through generations. I'm not even sure she would believe Edward was a vampire if I told her. Even though she lived on the Reservation for over a decade, she never really fit in. Everyone was nice to her and she got along with the natives alright, but she didn't love it. She tolerated it, because she's selfless and giving, and it was what my dad wanted, but she simply wasn't born there like he and I. She was an outsider, even in her own family, and there were certain things that she would just never get.

I decided not to concentrate on it. What was the point of brooding over what might happen in the future when my martyr, vampire boyfriend could kill me by accident tomorrow anyway? I might as well live while I'm alive. Even though he isn't.

"So you are, for all intents and purposes, dead."

"Indeed."

"Just a reanimated corpse." I stated.

"That's a zombie. Get it right," he scolded.

"My bad, homie. Now that Halloween is everyday, I'll have to brush up on my lore."

"I thought you were informed."

"I know _legends_. I know that you _exist_. I'm not exactly straight on the particulars."

"Well, I don't breathe," he started, "I mean I don't need to, only if I want to talk. I don't sleep, ever, or eat… unless I want to choke it back up later. I drink blood, from large animals, preferably carnivores, and that makes my eyes gold and not red, which is why I'm one of the good guys." He smiled at something internally. "My heart doesn't beat, but it somehow still aches for you."

"You're the sweetest hell-beast I know."

"Myth. I've never been to hell," he sighed.

"Yeah you're stuck with me… that's even worse."

***

"Hey demon," I said, tossing my books on the chemistry table the next day.

He gave me the stink eye. "I'm not a demon."

"Tomato, to-mah-toe. I didn't see you in the parking lot this morning."

"I came in late. There was an… issue at my home this morning that needed to be resolved." Secrets, secrets. I had thought we were past this. Evidently I still didn't rank.

"Are you going to divulge the circumstances of this issue presently?" He wants to be formal? Fine by me.

"Now's not the time, Emma."

"Well then tell me after school. I was thinking we could go the mall because I-"

He cut me off "I can't be with you after school today, I have to deal with some things with my family. And you can't be there."

I could read the distress in his face. Yesterday's footloose and fancy free vampire was a thing of the past and he was clearly troubled by what transpired between us in the woods. I wondered what, exactly, was troubling my little fanger.

He looked over at me quizzically, like I was the one being taciturn.

"What's your damage, Dracula?" I said, nudging him with my elbow. He didn't respond.

Was he angry that I knew his secret? He had seemed relieved yesterday, that couldn't be it. He didn't even have to tell me! He couldn't think that I would love him any less, I certainly reassured him of that. Then I remembered what bothered _me_ about the situation. The future, being born of his arch-nemesis, my relative mortality…

Mortality.

"Are you upset that I'm going to get old and die and you have to be 17 forever?" The words just tumbled out.

He glared at me. "We are NOT discussing this."

"Why not? Something is upsetting you, you might as well talk it out. Is that what it is? You're centenary and I have to experience life outside high school?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, then turned to glare at me. "I won't do it, Emma. I won't even entertain the idea for a moment, so forget it," he said harshly.

"Forget what? I'm just trying to dig through your hefty pile of emotional trauma and find out why I'm getting the literal and figurative cold shoulder now when I thought we were doing ok."

He rolled his eyes at me like he was placating a child. "I won't turn you into a vampire," he enunciated slowly, "so just drop the issue."

I barked out an unexpected laugh. "THAT'S what you think I want?! HA! I'm way ok with not being undead, thank you though. I want to be _with_ you, I don't want to be _like_ you. You think I want to _die_ for you? You think I'm ready to commit to an eternity with you, when you don't even put out? You think I want to give up _cheesecake_ in favor of bison? That's some heavy shit, Cullen. And a little cocky too, since we're being frank."

"You're not… you don't…?"

"How about we try to get through today? We can worry about tomorrow when we get to it. If we get to it. Cause, you know, you're so capable of killing me. I really do need to get to the mall, use up my gift cards before my untimely demise," I poked him in the ribs and could see him physically relax, but he kept a tense look on his face. There was obviously something else afoot, and he didn't want to talk about it.

Homeboy has another thing coming to him if he thinks I'm taking the backseat. I'm pushy and loud and I don't let things go, but luckily I'm also sneaky enough to play my cards right and figure out when to press an issue and when to save it for later.

I wondered who fucked him up like this. Some girl, insecure and needy, had done a serious number on him when it came to relationships. I'm no Sigmund Freud but I can spot damaged goods when I see it. So who was she?

He shot me another look, both menacing and hurt. Que pasa con that? I gave him a dirty look back. Two could play at this game. I deliberately edged my chair away from him, sneering.

He laughed through his nose and shook his head. I directed the rest of my efforts for the hour into chemistry and I didn't say goodbye to him when I walked out of the classroom.

***

It was weird to be in my bedroom after school. I'd been spending so much time with Edward lately that I was rarely home before dinner. I told my mom that I joined a book club and that's why I was never around in the afternoon, because it wasn't worth the hassle of explaining my boyfriend to my overprotective parents. Even though Bella would probably be cool about it, she would definitely tell my dad, even though she would promise not to. Then they would want to meet him, which was obviously out of the question. My dad would shit and be on the phone with the elders in half a heartbeat, trying to figure out a way to destroy him. And while she wouldn't buy into the vampire crap, Bella secretly wouldn't think he was good enough. In her eyes, no one would ever be worthy of the daughter she nearly who she nearly died bringing into this world.

So book club it was. I sat down at my desk to work on my Spanish homework when my cell phone chirped from across the room. I flipped it open to read the text message.

_Are you still not talking to me?_

Edward.

_Yes_, I typed back.

_HA! That was a response_

_It was text. I'm still not __**talking**__ to you_. For someone who spent so much Goddamn time in school you think he'd be a little smarter.

_What is it that you say? Tomato, to-mah-toe?_

I let that go unanswered.

_I'm sorry about this afternoon. I was having family problems and I didn't mean to take it out on you. That was wrong of me, and I truly apologize. Forgive me?_

I mulled it over. He said he was wrong. He's obviously not a human man, no wonder it's so easy to see through his charade.

_Ok_, I responded, _but now you owe me_.

_How shall I repay your benevolence_?

_This requires careful consideration. I'll get back to you_. I began devising different ways to demand sex from him. Seriously, these blue balls were killing me.

_Think it over in your car, I left a present there for you_. That rotten vampire knows how much I love gifts. Unfair.

I dropped the phone and ran out to my car, where there was a white box tied with a red string around on, waiting patiently for me on the passenger seat. I tore it open and popped the lid.

Cheesecake.

***

I started the Mustang and sped down the highway, slowing when I was in range of the tricky turnoff to the Cullens' mansion. In the large drive there were several cars, I could tell at least Esme, Edward and Alice were home, plus there was a huge, tricked out Wrangler that I didn't recognize. I pulled in next to the Jeep and got out of the car.

It was lifted on some big ass tires, which made it look bad as hell. I circled around it and gave a low whistle like a creepy autophile. Chrome brush guard, trailer hitch, snow plow attachment, sweet lights on the roof rack and splattered in mud from the wheel wells to the windows. THIS was a truck.

I finally made my way up the porch and swung the door open without knocking. I had been here so much in the past month that if felt silly and formal to do so. "Hey, coven!" I called out, crossing the threshold. Walking into the family room, I heard voices. Not yelling, but speaking heatedly and controlled, which was almost worse. This might have been a bad idea. Cheesecake makes me do funny things.

The conversation stopped when I got into what I assumed was their sight range. ALL the Cullens were home, Carlisle and Esme on the sofa, Alice and Jasper standing tentatively beside them, and Edward, scowling ferociously, standing inches away from the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life. Behind her, with his arms crossed was what could only be described as a brick wall of a man who looked decidedly amused at this new development.

They all stared at me.

I imagine I was supposed to be intimidated. But then they'd be winning, wouldn't they? I'd have to prove I could take the heat if I wanted to stay in their unused vampire kitchen. I swallowed once and sucked it up. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to thank Edward for a little gift he left in my car. I didn't know you had company."

"Company?" The gorgeous blonde sneered. "Like _she_ belongs here and _we're_ the visitors? Congratulations, you've done it again, Edward. I don't know how or why you always bring your little pet home and try to pretend she's one of us, that you could have any semblance of a_ life_," she spat with word out with acidity, "with her, but you sure do like to fuck things up royally, don't you?"

"LANGUAGE, Rosalie!" Esme scolded.

"Sorry, Esme, but there's no other way to say it. You get entranced by a human and thirty seconds later you tell her everything? I get it, Edward, she's 'special' and an enigma, but what part of 'keep our world a secret' is so foreign to you?! AGAIN you endanger us by letting your love of a fragile human best your instincts and your sense of family! I have been nothing but loyal to the Cullen name and I've done whatever I could protect us and ensure that we get to live as normal a life as possible among humans and at every turn you're undoing what I work so hard for! She will RUIN us, Edward, just like last time, and I WON'T let you do this again!"

Edward opened his mouth to speak but I wouldn't let him defend me. Blondie was a bully, and I wasn't going to get pushed around just because of my species. I interjected, "As the life ruining hamster that I'm certain you're referring to… Rosalie, is it? I have a few things I'd like to share. And while I know you're not _human_, I hope that you can find the civility in you to at least listen to them…?"

She laughed angrily and stalked towards me at vampire speed, bringing her nose to mine in a fraction of a second, a growl ripping from within her chest. I stood, unmoving, as she tried unsuccessfully to scare me. I stared into those golden eyes without blinking for a few seconds until I saw the giant guy in my peripheral vision, ready to remove Rosalie from the situation and I realized Edward was behind me, trying to gently pull me back.

"Beat it, Edward, I got this," I said without breaking my gaze. "Listen up you beautiful bitch. Edward didn't tell me shit. I was born on the Quileute reservation, which I'm sure you know, means knowledge of parasitic people was bestowed upon from the time I was old enough to listen. I saw him in school, pale white and ice cold, and I knew right away what time it was. I don't know what happened before, and I won't ask because I trust that when Edward is ready to tell me he will, but you can slow your roll about all that life ruining nonsense. I'm not out to get you. I love Edward. I want to be with him. He's pretty much the most important thing in my life right now. And if the time comes when it doesn't work out anymore, consider me gone. I have better things to do then stalk vamps, following them around like the lost puppy they no longer want. Now, if you're done trying to intimidate me, maybe you take a step back and give a girl a little room for air. Some of us still need to breathe."

She didn't move a muscle. I continued to look at her, unrelenting.

It seemed like hours had passed in our epic battle of wills, though I knew it was probably only seconds.

"I don't know," Edward mumbled from behind me.

Hearing his voice reminded me why I was there and I decided that winning a staring contest against the world's most beautiful vamp was insignificant. I turned my back on her, which I hope proved how much she didn't scare me.

"Don't know what?" I said, meeting his eyes.

"Nothing. Let's… let's go upstairs." I rejoiced inwardly. We never got to go upstairs! I think Edward was afraid I would try to jump his bones if we went to his bedroom. He reached for my hand and Rosalie sighed, exasperated, storming past us. She stopped briefly to put her face in mine yet again.

"The isn't over," she whispered fiercely.

"Bite me," I offered.

That did it. Everyone except Blondie was shaking with laughter. She said nothing more and charged out the front door, the giant on her heels.

Edward visibly relaxed at her absence and pulled me into his embrace. "Stupid little lamb," he said, laying a kiss atop my head. The rest of the Cullens looked at me expectantly, like they were waiting for some sort explanation.

"What? You're shocked? I was raised by wolves."


	9. Cherry

"So that's why you were so pissy this morning," I said, leaning back and putting my feet in Edward's lap. "Rub those please." The black leather couch in Edward's room was like butter, but it only mildly softened the blow of realizing there was no bed. No sleep. Right. No sex. Drat.

He smiled and picked up the left one. "Yes. I didn't want you to think you were the cause of the problem. Clearly it's much deeper than that."

"I don't know if that's really the case. Miss America seems to think I'm the sole source of evil in the world."

"Rosalie's… difficult."

"You don't say," I mused. "So she's what, your sister too? Who's Andre the Giant?"

Edward chuckled. "Yes, she's my sister. She joined our family shortly after Esme did. Carlisle found her dying and decided she was worth saving. I've had my doubts since then. The Giant is Emmett, who is my brother and Rose's husband. He's very… tolerant of her. They got 'married' again a few months ago and have been living separately since. Sometimes we all live together, sometimes we take our own routes. I didn't mention them to you because I knew Rosalie would react like this."

"Because this has happened before."

Edward said nothing and concentrated on my feet.

_Who was she?_

He shook his head slowly, sadly.

_God, who __**was**__ she?_

"Please stop asking," he said, looking at my feet.

I hadn't said anything.

Out loud.

Suddenly a realization crunched on me like a fat man on a Cheeto.

_Can you hear me?_

He nodded.

_Oh of all the tricky ass things you could do to a girl, you disgusting leech, I cannot BELIEVE you have been listening to my thoughts and not telling me! What the FUCK, Edward? You're a supernatural dick. It's not enough that I spill my guts for you everyday anyway? You had to INTRUDE on my brain and try to get just a little more that I was willing to give, eh? Did you see anything you liked? Have you seen my illicit fantasies, down to each dirty detail? Do you know how when I'm in the shower, I think about you and I-_

"Emma," he interrupted with a laugh.

_Yeah, yuck it up, this must be SO funny to you, and not even remotely embarrassing for me, don't worry. I was hoping you'd realize how absolutely depraved I am, how I lust after you like a 13 year old boy fiends for a back issue of _Playboy_. How you occupy pretty much every waking thought I have and even haunt me in my dreams. Do you like the dreams, Edward? Some of them are downright nasty, I'm surprised you still even talk to me, you Puritan prick._

"EMMA," he shouted through his laughter, "I can't hear it all."

"You… what?"

"I can hear some of it. Things that you direct specifically at me as if you were speaking. But that's it. Although I must say I'm grateful for the little insight as to what goes on when I'm out of your head. The shower? Nice." He smirked.

I guess there was no taking that back. I wasn't sorry, though. He should loosen up! Maybe a look at what I WISHED was happening would be the kick in the pants he needed to, well, take the pants off.

"That little diatribe was the most I've ever gotten from you. Usually it's just a rogue thought, a picture, the tenor of an idea. You must have really meant that one, though, I got it like you were satellite radio," he said.

_You can hear everyone?_

He hesitated.

"Almost everyone I've ever met. There was one person, a long time ago, whose thoughts I couldn't hear at all. But that was the only one. I have complete and undeterred access to the brains of vampires and humans alike, except for you of course. I only hear what you want me to hear."

_Well, yeah, from now on. It's gonna be like Fort Knox up here, you get nada_, I thought, tapping my temple.

"Don't be like that. I like when you think at me." He gave a wide, beautiful smile.

_Don't try to dazzle your way out of this_.

He blanched.

"Are you ok?" I asked, concerned.

He looked at me, pained. "Yes, I'm sorry." He smiled again, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I'll stay out. You know what they say about eavesdroppers."

I got the sore feeling that he'd stumbled across something he didn't want to hear.

***

The next day I got downgraded back to the couch downstairs. The TV was on and the rest of the family was out for the afternoon. I guess I only get to go to Edward's bedroom when there's a shrew downstairs trying to scare me into breaking up with him or dying or whatever.

Edward was in a markedly better mood than he was the day before so I decided to try my luck at my favorite fight. I shifted like I was uncomfortable, moved on the couch, and laid my head in his lap while he was still sitting upright. This made him visibly uncomfortable, but he allowed it. Score one for the Blackster. I looked up at him with doe eyes and he smiled tightly.

"Wanna mess around?" I asked.

He stroked my hair. "Not so much."

_Why?_

"Because I don't want to accidentally kill you. I rather like you."

"Not for nothing, Edward, but why are you keeping me around if you don't ever intend on sealing the deal?" I asked.

"You're so eloquent. I happen to enjoy the pleasure of your company."

"You might happen to enjoy the pleasure of my mouth as well." A virgin, and yet somehow, a slut. No wonder he had a hard time figuring me out.

He laughed. "You're right, I'm sure. But I can't risk losing you, that's not worth the price."

"I beg to differ. You were pretty fucking feisty in the woods when I blew up your blood-drinking spot, what happened to that guy? I miss that guy." It was true. He had even made that terrible joke about icing my cake.

"I got… caught up. You had just told me you loved me, which was kind of pivotal. I was very excited that I no longer had to hide what I was from you and that you accepted me anyway and I let things get a bit out of control. I can't let that happen again."

_I wish you would_, I thought. Ok so I was playing a stacked deck. I knew he loved hearing me think as much as he loved granting my wishes. _I just… I love you, Edward. I love you first and I love you most and I love you best. And I want you, Edward, I physically crave you and it's killing me that you don't concede even an inch, pun intended._ He smiled. _Get caught up again, Edward. You spend so much time torturing yourself for whatever reason with that pained and brooding look on your face, you deserve a release. You should just let go. I don't know if you noticed by, oh, I don't know the way I went all Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Rosalie invaded my personal space, but I'm pretty fucking tough. I can take whatever you're dishing out._

"I know you're tough. But I could kill you, Emma. So easily, accidentally, if I lost control."

"At least I'd go out smiling," I tried.

"Emma… you mean so much to me. I simply don't know if I could go on without you. And if I were the reason behind it? I could never forgive myself. Please try to understand."

_Don't you… want me? I_ thought pathetically.

"More than you know, sweet girl. But I will never let my desire to have sex with you beat out my desire to see you alive."

Shit. The prude had a point that I couldn't really argue. What could I say? "No Edward, really, it's much more important to me that I get penetrated than continue living, let's do this." Even though I was certain he would never hurt me, he didn't have the same confidence. I'm not sure why that was, though. How could he ever think he could be hurting me without knowing about it? I'm pretty much the loudest bitch who ever lived, I make my thoughts known.

I was getting desperate. I had all these ridiculous hormones coursing through my veins at all times and I was aching to be with him. I used the only weapon left in my arsenal.

I started to cry.

Turning my head away from him, I breathed out slow, delicate sobs and let fat tears roll down my face.

It wasn't hard. I was frustrated and angry and when I focused on those emotions they quickly spiraled into manifestation on my cheeks. This was a statement, I _never_ cried.

"Hey, hey… what's this? Oh Emma, don't cry! What's the matter?" He put his hands in my hair and brought his face to mine.

I said nothing and shielded my mind from him, continuing to cry quietly in his lap. He picked me up and laid me against his chest, kissing my forehead and tracing gentle geometric patterns into the skin on my back. I let this continue for a few moments as he tried to sooth me.

Then it was game on.

"Don't touch me," I pushed myself off his chest and fought to escape his arms.

"Emma? What-" I cut him off by struggling as he tried to keep me in his grasp.

"I said don't _touch_ me, Edward!" I cried harder and was using all my strength shake him off. He held me tight and continued his line of questioning until I finally collapsed back onto his chest.

"What was all that about?" he murmured into the top of my head.

_It's hard for me, when you touch me like that. I can't stand to have your hands on me when I know that you aren't going to do what I want you to with them. It hurts that you don't want to be with me enough to want to try_.

"Emma, that's not it at all. You're all I think about and I would love to make love to you. But I just can't," he explained, pained.

"Love me enough to try," I whispered through a hiccupping sob.

"Oh, Emma…" Grudgingly, he picked up my chin and put his mouth on mine. Excellent. All I needed was a foot in the door and an empty house. I began composing a farewell letter to my virginity in my head.

I kissed him back with everything I had in me. I pressed my body tightly against his and knotted my fingers into his gorgeous hair, pulling lightly at the roots and holding him to me. Slowly, like sneaking up on a hunt so he wouldn't suspect me, I began to maneuver my way into his lap again, but this time straddling him.

He worked his hands under the Dolce & Gabbana top I was wearing, compliments of Alice of course, and undid the clasp at the back of my bra. I could not believe my good fortune. Pulling the shirt up over my head, I tossed it across the room and let the bra slip down to my elbows. I wished I could feel badly about guilting him into this but I was too excited to care.

I cracked an eyelid and snuck a peek at my undead boyfriend. His brows were knit together and his eyes closed in a look of ferocious concentration. He was trying. I loved him a little bit more.

I discarded the bra and pulled my mouth away from his. He needed a break, and I was trying, too. I kissed lightly over each of his closed eyes, across those gloriously sculpted cheek bones and down along the line of his jaw. He exhaled deeply and then pulled my mouth back to his. This might work.

Deeply, tenderly, he pushed his tongue through my lips and into my mouth. I met it with mine and moaned softly when he began moving his hands up my torso from their place on my hips.

Slowly, I had to remind myself every few seconds. It took all my self control not to shove my breasts up into his face and forcefully extract a motorboat. Slowly.

In his own time, his hands drifted up and his knuckles brushed the underside of my breasts. I writhed in his lap at the contact and worked his shirt up over his head. He pulled me against him, and I took in a quick breath at the feel of his hard, icy body against mine. He tentatively loosened his grip, giving me an out if I wanted to pull away, but I pressed myself even harder against him. The friction was incredible.

He laid soft kisses on my bare shoulder. "You're so… _hot_," he whispered.

"Thanks," I acknowledged, "pilates."

He let out a soft chuckle. "It's very different without clothes on. Your body heat feels… extraordinary. It's unlike any other sensation."

"Hmm," I mused, "I can't say the same. You feel like most of the other ice sculptures I get naked with." He laughed again.

"You're exquisite, Emma Grace," he breathed into my ear as he lightly licked the shell. I shivered at the words and his touch. He moved his head down and captured one of my nipples between his lips. I damn near died right then, his cold mouth on me.

"Edward that's… that's good," I stammered, struggling for words that could come near expressing what it felt like. Good? Someone needs to pick up a thesaurus.

I sat my full weight into his lap, landing right on his cock. He groaned and I quickly lifted myself back up. "I'm sorry… slow, I know." I said.

"No it's just… that was… good," he said with a crooked smirk. Two lust-crippled idiots in a pod.

I moved my hands down the planes of his chest until they were at the waistband of his khakis. I made a move for the top button and waited for the backlash. Nothing. He worked his mouth against the side of my neck and I undid the zipper. Surely he would flag me here.

Nope.

Overjoyed, I reached under the elastic of black Calvin Klein boxer briefs. I could have told you that long before I saw them, though. I can spot a Calvin man from 50 paces.

He stilled when I wrapped my fingers around the length of his erection. _Slowly_, I thought to him. I let go and tried to work the pants and undies off of him instead. To my amazement, he lifted that perfect ass from the couch and cooperated.

Well. This was what Edward looked like naked. It was like Michelangelo had figured out what a Bowflex could create and sculpted my vampire in a perfect imagining of Greek proportions and perfection. Except he had a much more well-hung than the David. He was… unreal.

He laughed lightly and I realized I was staring. Gaping, more like it. I wasn't moving or speaking, just gazing at a creature so flawless it was like he was forged by the very hand of God.

"Unbelievable," I said simply. He pinched me on the arm. "Ow. Thanks," Clearly I needed a reality check.

I crushed my mouth back down onto his, delighting in my good fortune that this man would not only allow me to see him naked but would let me touch him too? I might as well have played the lottery, I was going for the hat trick.

Bringing my body back into contact with his, I was suddenly very aware that my skirt had ridden up around my waist and the only thing preventing me from real live sex was a thin silk barrier that, somewhere along the way, had becoming soaking wet which made his rock hard(er) cock feel even better beneath me as I pushed myself against it.

"Emma…" he warned quietly. The sound of my name on his lips shot tingles from my belly to my fingertips.

_I know_, I thought back. _Slowly. I'm doing the best I can. But you have no idea how excellent this feel, Edward. It's incredible. You're incredible._"You're perfect," I said aloud. "I love you."

He brought a hand to my thigh and rubbed a path up the length of my leg until he had a finger hooked into the string-side of my panties.

_Do it_, I thought desperately at him. _Please_.

He snapped it in half and pulled the fabric delicately aside, where it fell down my other thigh and pooled at my knee, making a point to maintain eye contact with me the entire time.

"Quid pro quo, Edward," I taunted "isn't turnabout fair play?" I waited for the response I knew was coming.

"I showed you mine… now show me yours," he said through teeth clenched with the effort of his control.

He dropped his head and laid a path of kisses from the hollow at the base of my throat, down the valley between my breasts and to my bellybutton, which he darted his tongue into, making me giggle and grab hold of his hair like reigns. I pulled him away from me, put a chaste kiss on his lips and stood up.

The ruined thong fell to the floor and I stepped out of it. I unbuttoned the top of my skirt and slowly worked it down my legs until I was bent over at 90 degrees. Kicking the skirt aside, I did what I can only imagine was the sexiest hair toss ever, and stood before him, butt ass naked.

Outside of infancy, this was the first time anyone had ever seen me like this. I was in dire need of his approval. In the moments that followed, I began to question everything about my body and the way he must see it. For example, I had never really given much thought to pubic hair. Because I had none. I was a competition swimmer for years (because it was the only sport I didn't need to balance for) and in swimming, you shave your shit. You shave EVERYTHING. It was an old habit that was just always the way I had done things. Did he think it was weird? I decided to let it go, it's not like I could grow hair on the spot even if I wanted to.

He continued to consume me with his eyes.

I stood there, with my goods on display, for what felt like a very long time before he said anything.

"Get over here," he growled at me.

I sashayed over and put a knee on either side of his. This was dangerous territory and I knew it. I wished I was scared, but mostly I was just horny.

He put a hand on each hip and looked at me with that beautifully tortured face. "Exquisite isn't nearly enough," he ran his thumbs in circles around the jutting bones there. "You are heaven."

_And you believe in heaven_, I reminded him.

"I do now," he said softly.

Excruciatingly slowly, with a look of pure determination, he moved his right hand into the cradle between my hips. Even slower, he lowered it a few inches and hesitated, his palm laying flat against my pubic bone. I didn't move. I think I stopped breathing.

_Please_, I begged. He raised an eyebrow at me. _Oh Edward, PLEASE_. He still held his ground.

"Show me," he whispered, almost inaudibly.

You don't have to tell me twice. I put my hand on top of his and guided him until he slid a long finger into me.

I wanted to tell him how it felt, but I had lost the capacity for forming words. It came out as a series of gasps and moans.

I put my hands on his knees, leaned back, and rocked against his hand, groaning and whimpering incoherently. I couldn't believe we made such serious headway today. I never would have thought he would have allowed such debauchery.

Just as I was wrapping my head around the feeling of him inside me, he pulled his finger out. I snapped my head in his direction and hissed at him. Hissed? Good to see evolution can be undone with nothing more than a bit of manual stimulation. Not only was I lost for the spoken word, but I was reduced to animal noises as a means of communication.

His eyes smoldered at me and he lifted me up over his cock. Like, we were literally twat-to-head, Little Edward's knocking at my door, poised for penetration. I almost asked him to pinch me again. He was going to toss both our V-cards to the wind on so unceremonious a day as this? Edward is much more human than he gives himself credit for and is much more a man than anything else when it comes to be manipulated with sex.

I put my hands on his shoulders to steady myself but made no other moves. He dropped his from my body and eventually put them beneath the couch cushions, holding onto what I assume was the frame of the furniture.

I understood what he was doing. I was in control. He didn't want to hurt me. He nodded once and his eyes burned on mine, and in painfully deliberate moves, I began to slide myself onto him.

Centimeter by centimeter, I eased his granite meat inside of me.

Now don't get me wrong. I wanted this. Quite possibly more than I've ever wanted anything else. And I was ready… emotionally, and in that I was dripping wet. And I had been having the time of my life with all the foreplay… but that shit HURT. THIS is what I had wanted so badly? Someone remind me next time that a digit is enough to get the job done, I didn't need this monster cock tearing me up from the inside out.

I squeezed my eyes shut with the effort. I didn't want to cry. If I cried now, I would ruin it for every other time and I'd be a loser virgin vampire groupie forever. I bit down on my lip and continued to slide down the length of him until he was full sheathed inside me, and then I stopped moving. I opened my eyes and looked at him, he was lost somewhere between pleasure and pain. That made two of us.

I felt myself stretching to accommodate him. And eventually, the pain began to subside and there was this feeling of… fullness. It was good. I started to remember what it was like before he violated me with his supernatural dick and I thought maybe I was ready to try some thrusting. Look at us, fucking! Who would have thought!

I braced my hands against his shoulders again for leverage and pulled back off of him before coming down once more.

This happened exactly four times before he broke the couch in half, we fell into the trench in the middle, and, once again in movements so fast I didn't realize what had happened until it was over, he diligently picked me up and sent me sailing about 12 feet across the room.

I cracked my head on a lamp that fell to the floor and shattered. My arm knocked a large potted plant over, spilling soil onto the pristine white throw rug beneath it. And I landed on my ass on the hardwood, once again knocking the wind out of me.

Fighting for air I caught sight of Edward, who, in the time it had taken me to get my second set of mildly serious injuries courtesy of him, had managed to throw on his pants and race out the front door, covering his nose and mouth as he shot me a pained and apologetic look.

My mind struggled to make sense of what had just happened. I had thought we were doing so well! As I regained the ability to breathe, I scanned my body for any other injuries.

That was when I saw it, and immediately realized what went wrong.

A teardrop of blood trickling down the inside my left thigh.


	10. I'll huff and I'll puff

"Well, no use crying over spilt virginity," I said, hoisting myself off of the floor. "We did quite a number on your parents' living room, Edward, I doubt I'll be invited back." I knew he could hear me, and I knew he felt awful. He would no doubt torture himself for a few hundred years over this. It was obvious that my first time had also been my last.

I sighed and took the stairs at a jog, not bothering to get dressed, and headed for Alice's bathroom because it was the most well-stocked. I turned on the shower, rinsed off the offending blood and washed up with some tutti-frutti stuff I would never buy for myself but nonetheless, luxuriated in because I knew Alice wouldn't get it if it wasn't at least $30 a bottle.

I wrapped myself in a fluffy white bathrobe that was clearly meant for borderline-dwarf Alice because I could feel a gentle breeze on the bottom of my exposed ass cheeks, and padded downstairs. Edward was picking up the pieces of furniture and lighting and carpet we had wrecked in our heated passion/domestic dispute. He looked at me ruefully.

"Well are you sorry at least?" I asked.

He tried to smile but failed.

I made my way over to him. "I want to kiss you. Nothing huge, just a quickie on the lips. I'll behave, I promise. But I won't do it if you're gonna get all Ike Turner on me again, so just let a bitch know."

He reached for me and kissed me sweetly on the mouth. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am, Emma. I'll never let that happen again. We were wrong to go so far."

How did I know that was coming. I gave a mental "harrumph" which I hope he heard, considering I directed it at him.

This wasn't over. But I'm a strategist, and I was picking my battles. Obviously we were done fornicating for the day so I knew it was best to just let it go.

"Any chance that your family won't figure out what transpired here today?" I asked with a ray of hope.

He laughed dryly. "In your dreams, love."

"Fuck."I said succinctly.

***

When I got home, I was in only marginally better a mood. I spent the remainder of the afternoon talking things out with Edward, convincing him I didn't need to go to the hospital, and letting him feel guilty for a little while because I told him he only got an hour to do it and then I didn't want to hear it anymore. I was ok, he was ok, _we_ were ok, and that's what mattered. Esme's couch, however, was not ok. It was pretty humiliating when she came home and saw what we had done to it.

I parked the Mustang and tried to get upstairs without my parents noticing my arrival. Pretty much the last thing I wanted to do was put on a farce for them when I had my own shit to deal with.

No such luck. Jake was in his chair in the living room, beer in hand, and heard me come in.

"Em? You home?"

I didn't answer, hoping he'd go away. Instead, he got up to meet me in the foyer. "Hey kiddo, how's it going?"

"Fine, Dad, I had a busy day and I'm really tired. I think I'm gonna blow off dinner tonight, I just want to shower and go to bed." I yawned for effect.

"You ok, pumpkin?"

"Yes, I'm just sleepy. Goodnight, Daddy." I patted him on the shoulder and started for my room.

"Ok baby, hey," he grabbed my wrist to stop me and planted a kiss on top of my head as he walked back to his chair. "Feel better." I smiled and took a step towards the stairs.

"Oh and Emma?" he asked. I turned back to him once more in recognition. "Make sure you get in that shower… you _stink_."

***

I felt like shit when I woke up the next morning. Everything hurt. Evidently I had muscles in my legs that I was unaware of and had never used before but had exhausted during yesterday's activities. I was achy all over and didn't even want to go to school, but I knew it would be terrible for Edward's ego if I didn't show up after what had happened.

My only minor consolation was that both my parents were gone by the time I woke up, my dad to the shop and my mom to Grandpa Charlie's for the day, so I didn't have to justify my new drunken bow-legged sailor walk to anyone. I hoped it would be better by dinner when they got home.

I trudged through the day, feeling worse and worse as it went on. I began to think that this was less about the rough sex and more about something flu-like that happened to be very ill-timed. By the time I got to chemistry, I felt deader than my vampire boyfriend/lab partner. It was like my feet were a hundred pounds each as I slogged over to the desk and sat, immediately putting my head down.

Edward, of course, was concerned but trying very hard to be casual about it after the lecture he got yesterday about over protecting me. "Dear God, what have I done to you, girl?" he asked, half joking.

"I don't feel so good." I closed my eyes against the bright fluorescents.

He reached out and laid a cold hand on my forehead. "Emma! You're burning up, you need to get home right away. I'll take you to the nurse and you can call your parents."

"Can you just get me to my car? I don't know if I'll make it to the nurse," I said dramatically.

"Oh but you can drive? Certainly not. If you won't go to the nurse at least call your mother or father and have one of them come to get you," he swallowed hard. Edward must get really worked up over the flu.

"No bueno, Jake's at work and Bella's in Forks with my grandpa for the day. I'm on my own."

He looked to be thinking something over intently. "Ok, I'll take you home. Let's go." He hefted me out of my seat, explained the situation to the teacher, and walked me to the parking lot. "Where are your keys?" I turned around and offered him my ass. He let out a little laugh and plucked them from the pocket, then proceeded to load me into the passenger seat of the Mustang.

He pulled out onto the highway. "So… where do you live?" I wondered if he thought it was odd that I had never invited him over. I felt a little guilty. He had to understand it was the vampire thing and that that was a can of worms I wasn't particularly interested in opening with my parents. I gave him the address and he maneuvered my antique whip in that direction.

"You look good driving my car," I told him.

"I look good doing everything," he countered. Cocky bastard. Cocky, truthful, bastard.

He pinned the accelerator and I was extraordinarily turned on at the sight of him speeding in my car.

_Sexy_.

That earned a smirk. "You think you're the only one who likes to drive fast?" The speedometer hiked past 120.

"Alright, alright, point taken, Fast Eddie, you're cooler than thou. Don't burn out my engine, this is a very old car."

He shook his head and pulled my hand into his.

Minutes later we pulled up to my house. He cut the engine and hopped out all vampire speedy so my horrifically frail and meager self wouldn't have to take on the obscene task of opening my own door. He swung it wide and picked me up bridal style, bumping the door behind him shut with his butt.

"If your stony ass dented my car I'm gonna stake you," I whispered menacingly, twining my arms around his neck.

He gave a crooked smile and supported my weight with one arm as he worked the lock on the front door with the keys from my ignition. His smile got bigger when he recognized the guitar keychain he'd given me.

He carried me over the threshold. It was kind of awkward and foreshadow-y and I got a sick thrill from it. I can't _marry_ a vampire. Can I? Shit kid, I'm 16, I can't marry anybody.

We stood motionless in the foyer for a moment and I realized he didn't know his way around. "Upstairs, second star to the right," I said without picking my head off of his shoulder. I was really exhausted and thankful he had insisted I didn't drive. I didn't particularly care if I died in a firey crash but I certainly didn't want any undue harm to come to my Shelby.

He pulled back the covers before laying me onto the bed and tucking me in tightly. Briefly, he sat on the edge of the bed, but then crossed the room to the closet, opened the door and dug around for a minute. He emerged with the most raggedy ass, broke-down looking doll that had ever come into existence. Her name was Annie, and she was the only thing in the world that I wanted to see.

He cradled her like she was a baby, and not a mangled mess of plastic and stuffing that had been dragged through the dirt, left overnight at the grocery store, and one time lost a limb that was reattached with emergency surgery sometimes in my eighth year. Literally, I insisted that she be brought to the hospital for treatment. Edward tucked her into my arms and I sniffed her head, a therapeutic habit I picked up sometime after I pulled all the hair out of it.

"How?" I asked.

"You thought to me, didn't you do it on purpose? I saw Annie in your head and you told me you wanted her. It must be the fever, playing with your mind," he rationalized.

"I wish I had the energy to be embarrassed by you seeing her," I said.

"Emma, be serious. When have you _ever_, in your life, been embarrassed?"

_Touche. But I was a little horrified at the look on your mom's face when she realized we busted up her couch fuckin'... Broadcasting the loss of dual cherries by way of destroyed living room wasn't high on my priority list._

He sighed. "It is what it is."

_Come lay with me._

He laid beside me on the bed. "Now go to sleep, you're a mess. Yes, I'll stay until you pass out," he answered the question I began in my head before I could even finish constructing it. "Feel better, love." He kissed me and Annie each on the head and I felt my eyes closing heavily. Sleep was instantaneous.

***

It was dark out when I woke up, and Edward was long gone. I heard pots and pans clanking in the kitchen and knew my parents must be home. Seven o'clock, that was just about right. We ate at 7:30, every night.

I rolled out of bed feeling a bit more clear-headed but I had sweated right through my clothes. I changed and took the stairs to go talk to my fam.

"You don't look so good, Em," my dad said, concerned. I shot him a pleading look, because we both knew what it would be like if Bella thought I was sick. She treated every sore throat like it was swine flu. "All pale and sweaty, what's the matter with you?"

He had obviously missed my nonverbal communication, so I turned it into a glare. "I'm fine, Dad. I fell asleep with my sweatshirt on and I got really hot." So lame. Telling the truth all the time made me a terrible liar, especially when I had to do it on the spot like that. I hoped he would let it go as I sat down at the table.

Bella, of course, flitted over to me in a panic. "Emma? Sweetie? You're not feeling well? Why didn't you tell me? Go back up to bed and I'll make you some soup." Why does everyone think soup is good for sick people? When I'm sick I don't want some brothy, carroty garbage, I want cannoli from an Italian bakery. When I have kids, they're getting dessert every time they sneeze sideways.

"No, Mom, I'm fine. Your bread is about to burn," I said as the beginnings of a charred scent wafted up to me. She seemed torn as to whether to hover over me or save the semolina from the broiler. Bread won. She went back to work making what smelled like shrimp sautéed in olive oil and garlic over pasta. Spaghetti, I think, or maybe fettucini, with a Caesar salad and the nearly burned bread.

I wanted to put my head on the table but I didn't want to rouse any more suspicions or get fed some douchey soup when I was voraciously hungry and needed real sustenance, so I sucked it up and tried to maintain casual conversation with my parents.

They weren't THAT bad, as far as parents go I guess. They were pretty young to have a high school aged kid, my mom was 40 and my dad 38. I just have sort of always been a go-my-own-way-er, and that's hard to do with overbearing parents. They love me, for sure, and I them, but sometimes it's tough to coexist as an individual with a mother who is always so… well, mothering. We were never the best girlfriends type of mother and daughter, our roles were always very distinct: she was the parent, I was the child, and we weren't buddies in the schoolyard. We didn't talk about personal things, really.

My dad was pretty typical too. He was that overprotective father that every guy fears being brought home to meet, the kind of man who would be cleaning his gun when a boyfriend walked into the room. But we were pretty tight despite it, I spent so much time in the shop with him when I was a kid and I picked up a lot of his personality. He didn't get offended when I cursed or let my mouth move as fast as my mind, he just understood that that was who I was, and he loved me more for it. He was much tougher than her, I didn't feel like I had to shield things from him because he was strong enough to take it. Sometimes it felt like too much emotional distress would break Bella.

Which is another reason I was trying to downplay my sickness. She'd stay up all night, checking on me, not getting any sleep, worrying pointlessly. It was annoying for me and bad for her too. Besides, I was feeling a little better, even if I was so _hot_.

"Emma, you really don't look well," my mother said, setting a huge pot on a trivet at the table. I rolled my eyes and looked to my dad.

"She said she's fine, Bella, relax." He winked at me and I shot him a grateful glance. "So how was school today, Em?"

I shrugged. "It was ok."

"Did your book club meet today?" Bella asked. If I wasn't starving three and a half times to death I would have just played the sick card and gone upstairs. I was SO not in the mood for parental small talky chatter.

"Yep," I said, forking a very unladylike heap of spaghetti in my mouth.

"What book are you kids reading now, sweetie?" she tried again. This would be a lot easier to walk away from if she wasn't such a good cook.

"Um, _The Merchant of Venice_." _The Merchant of Venice_? What kind of after school group gets together to read the Bard? Sixteen year olds notoriously don't give a shit about Shakespeare. It was the first thing I thought of. I hated myself a little.

"Oh that's one of my favorites! What part are you up to?" My mother, literature's whore.

"The part from the Courtney Love song… you know about the pound of flesh. Like, where did they take the pound from?" I should have just choked on a shrimp and ended it there. I didn't know shit about _The Merchant of Venice_ except that I read the Cliff's Notes for it online sometime last year so I could bullshit my way through an English essay and the only part that stuck with me was the pound of flesh. Probably because I get 100% on Rock Band playing "Celebrity Skin."

"Maybe you're not understanding it, dear, the pound of flesh was the loophole, because Shylock couldn't draw any of Antonio's blood and…"

She kept talking but I stopped listening. I nodded where I felt it was appropriate and said stuff like, "Oh, I get it now, thanks Mom." But inside I was just more and more irritated. Why did she have to be talking to me all the time? I just wanted to eat and then go back to bed and she insists on just jabber-jawing all GD day. I was losing my patience.

"Are you listening to me, Emma Grace?" Shit.

"Yes."

"What was the last thing I just said then?" she looked at me expectantly.

"Um, I forget."

"You are so rude sometimes Emma, I wonder how you even grew up in this house. Who taught you to treat people like that? You think you don't have to _listen_ when others speak? You think you're above what your own _mother_ has to say to you? I never thought you were a rotten teenager but if you're headed in that direction you better put the brakes on, miss, because I won't tolerate it."

I had to put down my fork so I could concentrate on controlling my temper. Also on not stabbing her with it. She was on my balls today and I was tired and sick and I didn't want to hear it. I was going to lose it if she pressed my buttons again.

My dad caught on to what was happening right away. He should, considering I inherited the short fuse from him. He intercepted when he saw my white-knuckled grip on the table.

"Em, did you put new tires on the Shelby?"

I smiled at that and relaxed a little. He always noticed that sort of stuff. "Goodyear Racing Eagles."

"Nice! I thought that's what they were. We ought to go down to the track this weekend and lay some rubber." Sometimes, I really loved my father.

"That sounds expensive, Emma, I thought we talked about you saving your money. College isn't cheap, you know, especially those East Coast schools you seem to be so fond of. Spending money on new tires when you don't need them isn't really a sound investment, is it?"

I clamped my teeth together so hard and fast that I might have cracked a filling. WHY was she toeing the line like this? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I dropped my gaze to my lap because looking at her infuriated me. Rage was vibrating in every bone in my body, I was shaking from my skull to my tippy toes with anger.

"Really, Emma," she continued. "It's just a car."

I exploded. Not like, yelled at her, I literally exploded. Right out of my skin.

It felt like my spine cracked and re-grew in the blink of an eye, longer and stronger. I kicked my legs out behind me and felt the force in them as I put a foot through the sheetrock five feet behind me. Stretching my arms out, my hands morphed into furry black paws with claws and I landed on the dinner table, shattering the wood into splinters and throwing the pot of pasta into Bella's lap. I shook out my head just in time to see the remains of the beautiful Prada shirt I had been wearing, shred and flutter to the ground.

I looked out at the scene I had just caused in my kitchen through eyes so sharp it was like I had been blind before. I didn't know what happened, but I sure as shit knew I was no longer human.

"Well," Jake quipped conversationally, "it appears as though there are vampires in Seattle."


	11. Durability

Edward's POV

Emma wasn't in chemistry. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, considering her state yesterday, but I was certainly disappointed. I was still harboring a near debilitating guilt from what had happened during our poor attempt at making love and I felt sorrier for myself every minute that I was apart from her.

When we were together, she somehow managed to make light of it, I felt better and like we were a team, not like I was a monster who had taken advantage of her and subsequently given her potential brain damage… again.

I simply couldn't shake off this foreboding sense that everything about us was wrong. I was just too supernatural and she just too human, and we could never behave like a typical couple. It was laughable that we were even trying.

I found myself in almost the exact same position that I had been in with Bella in Forks. She simply wasn't meant for my world, and I had to stop pretending like she could be part of it. In some ways, though I hated to admit it, Rosalie was right.

My day was very boring without Emma making her trademark brutal observations and sending me "random mental Post-Its" as she called them. I realized how much I longed for her when she wasn't present for the daily activities I had become accustomed to. The hours dragged and physically ached to be near her.

Was this would it would be like all the time if I had to leave her? I could _barely_ tolerate one day apart from Emma, how could I ever abandon her for good? I was feeling a sinking sense of déjà vu, these were the same sort of thoughts I had battled with before I made the choice to let Bella live her life without me.

I didn't know if I could stomach it again. Leaving Bella was far and away the hardest thing I had ever done, I didn't think I could go through it again.

Would I have to?

I didn't want to put Emma in danger, and yet I constantly was simply by her proximity to me. And her brash fondness for intimacy certainly didn't help the cause, either. But the mere idea of tolerating even another day without her presence, let alone an eternity, tied my stomach in to knots and put a crushing ache on my chest. That solidified the decision for me.

I couldn't leave her.

I wouldn't.

But every single boundary was back in play. We couldn't touch or tease or try, it was simply too dangerous.

My heart sunk a little at the realization. I had never felt so human than I did when I was, well, being nothing more than human with Emma. The way she touched me made me feel like my deadened heart was not only beating, but singing, it was like electricity coursed through my body and I was_ alive_. And when I got to touch her? The world stopped moving and the only things that continued to exist were her and I and glorious nakedness.

I mourned the loss of it. But, I thought, it was better to miss sex than to miss Emma. To me, it was a choice between the lesser of two evils, and I would do anything to never be apart from my girl.

***

I spent the afternoon moping around the house. I hated not being with her, it had become such routine for us to spend time together after school. I hated it a little more when a delivery truck pulled up outside and the driver knocked on our door. Esme answered, spoke to the man, and then walked to the living room.

"Edward, go upstairs for a moment, please, I've got a delivery coming in."

"Oh? Is it a present for me?" I asked with a smile. Why else would I have to leave? And why was she trying to keep a secret from me that I could easily pluck from her head?

_I should certainly hope not,_ she thought sarcastically. _I just need to clear the room, it's a new couch. I don't imagine you'll be having your way with this one?_

"I said I was sorry!" I wailed to her.

_I know, dear. I'm just teasing you. We've all wrecked our share of furniture. And houses._

"Overshare," I interjected.

_That's what happens when you poke around in people's brains. I just wanted to tell you that you don't have to be embarrassed, Edward. You know, of the throes of passion and all that._

"You read too much Danielle Steele. I'm going for a walk."

My walk quickly turned into a run, which quickly turned into a hunt when I ran into a herd of elk up on the mountain. I spent a few hours in the fresh air, and then when it was dark I decided it was time to go be creepy.

Emma wasn't in her bed. I knew this because I was lurking outside her window and the bed was made and the room was in perfect order, so I could tell she hadn't been in it in sometime. Emma comes into a room like a hurricane.

I hoped that meant she was feeling better. I listened intently and heard Bella and who I assumed to be Jacob talking in the kitchen.

"…doing so much better than I would have ever expected her to," Jacob finished a sentence just as I tuned in.

"Yes but that doesn't mean she's _ok_, Jacob, she's far from ok. Don't talk to me about my own daughter like I don't know," Bella reprimanded.

"You worry too much. She's fine, she's gonna be fine, and we have bigger problems to deal with than Emma's… condition. Remember?"

"Yes, of course, you're right…" Bella conceded. I stopped listening then and headed back into the woods at a run. So, Emma was alright, but not at home? Where had she gone? Bella was much more concerned about her than Jacob was, but I suppose that was just Bella. Emma had said she was a worrier when it came to her daughter.

I slowed to a walk in the thicket of the forest as I pondered the situation. If she was fine, like her father had said, would she be in school tomorrow? I did a mental victory dance. It was just too hard to be away from her.

But I shuddered when I thought about the no-touching clause I had to impart on our relationship. This would not go over well with my tactile little human. I imagined there would be lots of shouting and possible tears and I had to remind myself to be strong. She had really gotten to me with all the crying last time and, though I hate to assume the worst of her, it was very typically Emma to be that conniving when there was something she wanted badly. I got the feeling that at least some of that scene had been contrived to make me feel like a jerk and let her have her way.

It worked of course. She really was brilliant.

It was then that I heard a rustling behind me. I had hunted already but my night felt so empty and I got a case of what humans would call "the bored hungries" and I figured I could eat again, even if I wasn't thirsty this could at least present a challenge and take up some time. I tried to catch the scent of whatever was in the bramble, but the wind was blowing east and I wasn't able to get a read on it. I spun around quickly and saw the hulking outline of an enormous figure silhouetted in the moonlight. Huge, gargantuan, it was like a horse but thick and muscled, and it dropped its bottom jowl and growled at me.

I hadn't seen one in so very long, it took longer than usual for me to register the creature before me.

A werewolf.

Mine own enemy.

I was paralyzed with the realization. We were so far from the Quileute reservation, how was one up here? WHY was one up here?

As I mentally debated the severity of the situation, it sprang. In an eighth of a second I was on my back, pinned to the forest floor at my shoulders by the sharp forepaws of a mammoth beast.

It growled once more, deep and menacing, and lowered its face to mine.

It licked the side of my face from my chin to my forehead.

It morphed into a laughing, naked Emma pressed up against my body in the moonlit woods.

She violently crushed her mouth onto mine with need and urgency, tracing my lips with her tongue, moaning quietly and pushing her figure into mine.

Too soon, she drew her perfect pink lips away, propping her elbows up on my chest and resting her chin in the cradle of her palms, a small satisfied smile playing on her lush mouth.

My mind reeled.

"Hi," she purred.

In motions so fast I almost didn't see them, she swept her arms under me and rolled over, pulling the full weight of my body on top of her. I panicked and tried to jolt off, else she would be crushed underneath me. She locked her hands onto my hips and held me in place.

"I'm durable now."

With one swift tug, she ripped the jeans right off of my body

***

Emma's POV

Someone must have listened to Shakira and let the she-wolf out of the closet. Because there I was, standing on what used to be the kitchen table, growling at my parents.

Jake looked… perturbed. But he held it together, of course. Bella, on the other hand, was a train wreck. She was sobbing something about "not my baby" and she had buried her face in her hands.

I looked at them through my perfect eyes. My father made slow, controlled movements towards me. "Emma," he said smoothly, "I know you must be scared. I know you're angry, and I know how hard this must be for you. But it's very important for you to relax right now."

Angry? I tried to remember why I would be angry. Oh, right. My mother had called my _priceless_ automobile "just a car." I growled at her and kicked a salt shaker in her direction.

"Hey," Jake scolded, "enough. Emma, we have to go outside now, ok? I'm going to go with you. Your mother is going to stay here." I made a scoffing noise. Of course she would stay here. I didn't want her encroaching on my wolfiness. I wanted to be with my dad, who understood and didn't cry like a bitch just because I was now a hairy monster.

I padded to the back door and scratched at the sliding glass. Like a dog asking to go out. Pathetic. I laughed a bit and Jake did too. "I know, it's weird. Let's go outside, ok?" I nodded.

It took some finagling to get through that door, because I was massive and I guess homes just aren't built with werewolves in mind. I thought that was sort of racist but whatever. When we were outside, my dad continued to made steady movements and speak slowly. I wondered what sort of body language I could use to convey "I'm not retarded."

"It's going to be a while until you can be human again, Emma. You need to be able to control your emotions and get your anger in check before you can phase back. I don't want you to be scared, because eventually you'll be able to do it, but you just don't have the power to do it right now." I motioned for him to proceed. "You have to let go of what made you angry. You have to envision yourself as human. It's very complex and abstract, I know, and that's why it takes so long to master. You simply have to be able to… will yourself back into form, does that make sense?"

I nodded. It made perfect sense to me.

"Are you ok, Emma?" I rolled my eyes at him. I was more than ok. I was super and supernatural. "You're a weird kid, Em. You're dealing with it a lot better than I did, and I even had a pack. I have to go inside and handle your mother. Between the two of us though, right now I think I have it rougher than you. Try not to get into any trouble out here, huh? And don't sweat it about not controlling your phasing, it will come to you eventually." He headed back into the house.

I thought about what he said about changing back. It didn't sound that hard. I decided to try.

I closed my eyes and I pictured myself as a human. I remembered what it felt like in my own body, what I looked like, how a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress clung to all the right places, and the way I felt when I walked in high heels. Then I thought about the sensations I got when Edward touched my body. I remembered every detail and it left me longing to relive it. In that moment, I desperately wanted my human form. So much, in fact, you could say I willed it into existence.

When I opened my eyes again, I was very naked and very human. I thanked every God I could think of that my dad was in the house because this would have been beyond mortifying. I looked around the yard for something that I could fashion into an outfit. I wished Alice was there, she's always so prepared with the perfect ensemble.

Instead, I settled for the Adam and Eve collection. I reached up to a thick branch covered in leaves, wrapped my hand around it and snapped it off the tree like it ain't no thang. I used it to cover my naughty bits as I walked to the house and snuck in. Careful to keep my back against the wall and my new tree outfit close in front of me, I called for my mother.

"Mom? Can you… bring me a towel? Maybe a bathrobe?" Jake's gasp was audible and Bella came rushing into the living room, sans any of the aforementioned items.

"Emma! You're back?! Oh honey!" She tried to throw her arms around me but my branch blocked her.

"I'm naked," I whispered.

"I don't care! Oh baby, I thought I lost you, oh my sweet little girl, come here!" She was still trying to work around the tree limb which I clung to dearly to ward her off. Pretty much the last thing I wanted to be doing was giving my mom a naked hug.

"Mom, a sweater, a raincoat, really, anything at this point. Please." She was talking and I wasn't listening. Nothing she said to me at that moment was important. "DADDY!" I yelled. "I'm human and wearing a tree, please get me a muu-muu or a shower curtain with which to shield my nudity and she WON'T STOP TALKING TO ME!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Jake charged into the room with the blanket from the back of the couch, which he tossed to me, hanging it from one of my more rogue twigs, and turned his attention to my mother. "Are you out of your fucking MIND, Bella? When she asks for something, just GIVE it to her before you piss her off again and she phases and MAULS your ass!" Bella made a face like someone ran over her puppy. "DO NOT give me that look Isabella, if you want to look hurt, keep it up and I promise you, you will be. She has no CONTROL, Bella! She will KILL you without even thinking!"

I managed to wrap the blanket into a makeshift toga. It was no DVF, but at least it was clothes. Sort of. I tossed the leaves out the back door and listened to my father go on about my lack of self control as he continued to ignore me and berate my mother. It was actually quite amusing.

"She BARELY even has cohesive thought right now! You're INSANE for goading her like that, and if you continue, you'll deserve what you get. She's an ANIMAL!" He shouted into her face.

"Actually, I'm quite human at the moment," I interrupted.

"No Emma, you're-" he stopped talking. "Emma! You're human? What? How?"

"I did what you said. It wasn't rocket science, I just concentrated," I shrugged. "I told you I was human when I was asking for help, she kept trying to HUG me and I really just wanted to not be all nudey."

"I didn't even realize, I was so caught up in the danger your IDIOT mother was putting herself in, it went right past me. Emma! I can't believe you! I'm so proud!" He beamed at me. Bella sulked on the couch.

"I busted my ass for the last 10 years bringing home straight A's and all I had to do to get your approval was grow a tail? What a crapshoot. But Daddy… I think we need to talk."

"I think you're right, Em." He reached for my hand and led me to the family room.

And that's when I found out that my father was a wolf.

***

Bella excused herself upstairs for the duration of the conversation.

"It's hard for her," Jake explained. "She doesn't really care for the preternatural, creeps her out, ya know?

"Sure sure, but how could you not have TOLD me, Dad? All that time, all those stories from Grandpa, and you never told me it was real, that you were part of it. I thought it was all horse shit and folk lore."

"It was a long time ago, Em. The vampire clan in the area that triggered my transition left, and I was only able to phase for a few years. That's why I'm so old now, I resumed the aging process when they left."

"Hold the phone, I'm not aging?!" I asked, elated.

"Nope."

This was pretty much the best news I'd ever gotten. No wrinkles, no menopause, no gray hair, boobs that never sagged and a tight ass? Sixteen forever sounded beyond excellent.

"You're pretty tough now, too. Not that haven't always been," he grinned, "got a head like a coconut and lightening fast healing. Not to mention strong as hell."

I pondered that for a minute. That's why I snapped my branch-dress right off the tree. Oh this was incredible. I was completely sold on werewolfing. How could anyone hate this?

"It's not all fun and games, Emma. You have responsibilities to your people now. You are a protector. You have an obligation to protect your secret and the Quileutes. But it's different for you than it was for me, I guess. You don't have a pack," he mused.

"I'm a lone wolf," I said laughing.

"I guess you are. So don't do anything stupid, Emma. Don't go off looking for trouble. You're the only you I've got, I don't want to compromise that. So while I know you feel an allegiance to your heritage, you can't go out hunting vampires, Emma. You just can't, no matter what your instincts tell you, it isn't safe because you don't have anyone on your flanks. If you come across one, you just run. Do you hear me? RUN, Emma, like you've never run before, because it could quite literally become a matter of life and death," Jake lectured.

Run from vampires. Like some sort of pansy ass bitch. I couldn't wait to run _into_ Rosalie and take a chunk out of her well-formed ass.

"We can only hope that there are some sort of nomadic vampires passing through town, and they stayed a little longer than they intended. I wouldn't know what to do if a coven of them have settled here, they would put our entire community in danger, not to mention you would stay like this for as long as they loitered. I wonder who it could be that triggered this in you. GOD I wish like anything I could still change, I'd love to be out there with you, Em, running and tearing up bloodsuckers." He looked wistful and nostalgic. I counted every blessing I ever had that my dad couldn't still phase because I would hate to watch him and my vampy boyfriend fight to the death in my front yard.

"One thing's for certain, Em. There's a whole world of danger out there for you. Just be careful, promise?" Jake asked.

He was so misinformed. There was no danger for me. There was only good times to be had now that my boyfriend and I were both immortal. I couldn't wait to get down to the dirty business of supernatural sex.

"Yeah, Dad. I'm going for a wolf run though, I want to practice phasing. Is that ok?" I felt stupid asking. It's not like he could stop me if he didn't want me to go, I'd just bulldoze him and head for the forest. But it seemed like the polite thing to do.

"Of course, sweetie. Just watch your back. And don't be home too late, you have school tomorrow." He made a little face that I couldn't interpret and I shot him a questioning look. "Well you don't need as much sleep as you used to, I guess it doesn't really matter what time you get home. Old habits, you know. Be good, Emma. My little girl, all grown up and wolfed out." He clutched his heart like it ached with pride.

I laughed. "Sure sure. I love you, Daddy." I walked out the back door and disassembled my blanket toga, thinking briefly about how I hadn't said a word to my mother about this. If she couldn't handle it, that's not my problem. It was just nature to me.

I tucked the blanket away in the bushes to put back on when I returned from my animal expedition and walked into the trees. That's when I realized… I didn't know how to turn into a wolf, only how to reverse it.

I stood in place and thought wolfy thoughts. Nothing. I tried to imagine my wolf form, the way I did when I was trying to become a human, but it didn't come to me the way it had before, I guess because my wolf-self was too new for me to recall with any clarity.

I remembered changing the first time, how angry I was at my mom for dissing the Shelby, and I tried to work up the same level of rage again. I got the feeling anger was the key to a quick transition. But I couldn't get as excited about it as I had before, it seemed sort of inconsequential in the scheme of things now.

Still, I knew it wouldn't be hard to get fired up enough about anything to incite a riot in my insides, and for the first time I looked at my horrific temper as a blessing. I thought about the time Rosalie called me Edward's pet.

Wolf form.

_That bitch has NO CLUE what she's gotten herself into,_ I thought as I took off at a run. Somebody's not human anymore, and somebody else is gonna get an epic beating. I hoped she could walk the walk, because I might feel bad about brutalizing her if she's all mouth and no action.

I spent the night in the woods, phasing from one me to the other, practicing and getting comfortable with my new self. I might have killed a couple rabbits, but I felt really bad about it after and realized that chasing woodlands creatures and subsequently catching and eating them was not nearly as fun as Edward made it seem. I still preferred cheesecake.

When I got home, it was nearly dawn. I phased into human, a virtual pro, and swaddled myself in the blanket from the couch. I made a mental note to leave a t shirt or something out here for next time, this sheet was less than ideal.

Trudging up the stairs to my room, I was exhausted from all that had gone on since last night, from my first change to the hours I spent cavorting in the forest, phasing forms and tiring myself out. I heard Jake snoring from the stairs and cringed a little. Super senses were phenomenal, but I never wanted to hear what went on in my parents' bedroom.

I kicked my door open and saw Bella sitting on my bed, which she had obviously made. And straightened up the room. Typical.

"Emma?"

I stared.

"Emma I'm… I'm sorry."

"For?" I asked.

"For everything. I'm sorry for not understanding. For not being able to… tolerate what you are. And for saying your Mustang was just a car," she smiled weakly.

"Mom," I threw my arms around her, "just don't stop loving me, ok?" I asked.

She hugged me back, as hard as her mere human arms could manage. "Never, Emma, no matter what. You're everything to me." I smiled into her hair. I couldn't stay mad at her any more than she could at me. We couldn't fault one another for just being what we couldn't help.

"Please be careful, Emma, that's all I'll say. Please." Bella begged.

"Careful is for pussies, Mom. But I'll think about it," I smirked, yawned, and headed for the door.

"Where are you going? Aren't you tired?" She stood up to pull back my comforter.

"Yes, but I'm going to sleep on the couch. It's too clean in here. Plus it matches my outfit," I said, gesturing to the blanket I still had draped around me.

Bella sighed, defeated. She had done all she could to keep me within the lines, but I always insisted on scribbling myself all over each and every page of her coloring book.

***

I slept through most of the day, recharging my batteries from the both emotionally and physically exhausting night previous. When I finally woke up, I heard the familiar sound of Bella getting to work in the kitchen on dinner. I didn't think I had the energy or the temperament to sit through another like last night's.

It was dark out now. I ached to get into a doglike state and fuck around in the woods some more. Passing through the kitchen, Bella offered me a ladle-full of soup from the stove. I struggled to maintain my calm. I just _hate_ soup. Not only for sick people, for all people. It's not a _meal_! There's no _substance_. I wanted a pizza and I didn't want to share it. I held up my hand to stop her, she was coming at me full force with some chickeny concoction that held no interest for me.

"I'm going for a run… don't wait up," I instructed her.

"Emma aren't you going to eat?" she asked hopefully.

"Maybe I can catch a herd of deer or something off guard," I said.

She blanched.

Whatever.

***

It didn't take me long to find him, although I wasn't even sure I was looking. I caught Edward's scent a few yards from a meadow where we had spent many afternoons together. It was strange to smell him through this nose, he was so potent and sweet, I could follow him by scent alone. The old men on the Rez always talked about stinking leeches, but I think that might have just been some shitty old prejudice, because still he smelled like heaven to me. I idly wondered how I ever got by with human senses, this was so much better.

When I finally spotted him, I ducked into an overgrown thorny bush. His back was to me, and he had stopped moving. What was he doing out here anyway? There was barely any big game, besides me of course, so he couldn't be hunting. Maybe he goes for romantic strolls without me? What a dirty bastard.

The wind blew eastward through his unthinkably beautiful hair, and he didn't move a muscle. Suddenly, he whipped around so quickly I knew my human eyes wouldn't have been able to register the movement. I let out a low growl and pounced on him, pinning his rock hard body to the dirt.

He was no less than perplexed. His eyes, a warm amber that looked to be lit from within, widened in horror as he processed this development.

I brought my nose to his and growled again, low and threatening, and it looked as though his 130-some odd years were flashing before him as he awaited death by werewolf.

It was too much for me. If he was capable, he would have peed his pants and I was trying my damndest not to do the same, I was laughing so hard.

I dropped my bottom jaw and licked a long stroke up the side of his perfect face, and phased back to human, lying on top of him. Again I was very aware of how naked I was. This time, I saw it as a gift.

Once again, I had shocked the shit out of Edward. He was speechless as he looked up at me, mystified. I kissed him like I meant it.

"I'm durable now," I offered as explanation, narrowing my eyes at him.

I wasted no time in rolling him on top of me in a swift movement. He continued to stare, but scrambled to get the weight of his body off of me. Like I couldn't take it, ha! I held fast to his wrists and kept him on top. Looks like the new kid on the block is just as strong as her boyfriend. We were now, as we were always meant to be, finally equals.

In the same frame of thought, there was something else that simply had to be done. I reached up and ripped the $250 jeans from his body. "In the spirit of leveling the playing field," I whispered, "I'm naked. And you have far too many clothes on."

Let the games begin.


	12. Lemon

He looked like he wanted to say something. I was certain that I didn't want to hear it. He was hovering over me, in just a beige sweater and those damn Calvin Kleins that looked better on him than on Marky Mark, and I was naked as the day I was born.

"Emma…" he began. I pretended not to hear him and reached for the hem of his shirt, which I pulled over his head without protest. What sort of argument could he give? I was a God damn werewolf, he couldn't hurt me now if he tried. I almost asked him to throw me into a redwood for good measure.

_Kiss me_, I thought to him. He obliged without hesitating. It was quite possibly the greatest kiss in all of history, including when Noah told Allie it still wasn't over and kissed her in the rain on the dock.

He held nothing back. It felt to me like all this time when we'd been screwing around I'd never really been _kissed _like I deserved to be, like he was capable of. It was a very humbling experience. He pushed my hair away from my face and held his hand in it for control of my head as he pushed his tongue into my mouth. His other hand was at my shoulder, holding me to the ground while his entire body was laid on top of me in a way it had never been before, the full weight of him pressing into me. I felt his cock lengthening against my stomach and I moaned from the sensation. I wanted it bad.

I reached with my free hand for the waistband of his boxer briefs and tried to slide them over his beautiful butt, but he stopped me. This was what I had been waiting for. I couldn't wait to hear his reasoning now. What half assed excuse would he come up with not to fuck me this time since the ole standby "no no, you're human and I'll kill you by accident" was shot to shit. I began putting together a list of rebuttals in my head, which he must have heard.

"For once in your life, Emma, be quiet," he said with a smile. He took both my wrists in his right hand which he used as a manacle, and held them up over my head so I couldn't touch him, but still felt the delicious pressure of his lower body flush against mine in all the right places.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this. How often I've thought of what I would do to you if I could," he whispered as he pressed his lips to the side of my throat. "I've got it all planned out in my head. And it goes slowly. I'm driving, Emma, so you can keep your mouth shut unless you want to say something dirty. I might like it if you say something dirty."

Something dirty? I could barely remember how to breathe, let alone speak. I mentally filed that away in case I ever regained the gift of words. Edward wants to talk dirty. Does he know what he's asking for? I can barely control the shit I say when I_ try_, and he wants me to vocalize my filthy thoughts to him? He might regret this later.

His golden eyes burned on me thoughtfully. Burned with over a hundred years' sexual repression. With his left hand, he palmed my breast and roughly pinched the tip. I gasped and writhed beneath him. Oh THIS was the kind of Edward I could get down with. I decided that being a wolf is the best thing that ever happened to me. I fucking love my ancestry. I stayed quiet, anxious to see what was next.

"Can I trust you not to move your hands if I let go?" I nodded once. I might have been lying, I hadn't decided yet, but I was gonna go with it for the time being. He slid his hand down my arm lightly, stopping to trace my collarbone with his index finger before he drew it down between my breasts. "You're perfect, you know," he sighed.

It was then that I had an odd realization. He wasn't cold. Or at least, he didn't feel cold to me. I thought back to what my dad had told me yesterday in my crash course on Wolfology 101, that my body temperature ran at a toasty 108 degrees at all times. I guess that sort of neutralized the formerly frigid feel of Edward's form. Now it just felt… incredible. We were like fire and ice coexisting, and his cold hands stoked my flames at every touch.

He splayed his hands flat against my ribcage and brought his mouth to the spot behind my ear with some unreasonable tongue play that he then worked down my neck.

"I love you, Wolfgang," he said, smiling against my neck.

"Samesies, Nosferatu," I whispered back.

He tilted my head back, nudging my jaw with his nose, and kissed the underside of my chin softly, drawing a slow wet path with his mouth down the center of my body until he paused on my sternum. I didn't move, I didn't look at him.

_Your mouth, please._

I was still letting him run the show. I agreed not to_ talk_ to him, right? Besides that was borderline dirty talk anyway, though it barely even scratched the surface of the other filthy things I was considering. Listen, months of celibacy and a detachable shower head gets a girl to thinking. Edward wasn't the only one who'd given some consideration to how this might go down. I had to bite my tongue to not shout pornographic commands at him. _I_ might have been progressive enough for that sort of thing but Edward was still, well, old-fashioned to say the least. He might need the PG-13 version of what I fantasized.

But the boy took direction like a champion. He dragged his tongue up the hill of my right breast and flicked it out at the nipple, tracing slow circles around the circumference before he pulled it roughly into his mouth and sucked. I dug my fingers into the dirt to prevent them from betraying the truce, but good God did I want to bury them in that magnificent mane and steer him. _Edward is driving_, I reminded myself.

It was then that I heard something vibrating in the pocket of his ruined pants. My head snapped forward and I raised an eyebrow at him. _There is no way I'm this lucky._

"No… Phone," he mumbled, laughing around the tightened tip of my breast.

I lowered my head back to the ground, dejected, as the call made its way to voicemail.

A millisecond later, it started up again. We both lay still, listening to it vibrate through seven rings before it fell silent again.

Once more, the phone began to shake nearly as soon as it had stopped. He groaned, released my nipple from his mouth and sat up on his knees, butt pressing into his heels, between my thighs…. With a stupendous boner tenting out the Calvins in front of him. It would have been comical if it wasn't painfully sexy. He mumbled something that I didn't quite catch but that sounded vaguely like "life ruiner" as he reached across me to dig the phone out of his abandoned jeans pocket.

"The only person more irritating than you," Edward said, glancing at the caller ID.

Alice, of course. I was so glad my new ears allowed me to eavesdrop so easily, even in human form. Gosh, being supernatural was handy.

"This had better be good," he growled into the receiver.

_I can't see you!_ Alice shrieked.

"I should hope not," he said, casting a look down at his woody and walking his fingers lightly up and down the tops of my thighs. I giggled.

_Are you with Emma?_

"What's it to you?"

Alice was silent momentarily, looking for the future was my guess.

_I can't see Emma either! _she shouted, hysterical.

"Again, I count my blessings," he reached down and pinched my nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and pulling gently. I gasped and let out a little sigh of appreciation.

_Are you… oh, __**EWW**__, Edward, you answered the phone?! What's wrong with you?!_

"I thought there was an emergency, the way you kept calling. Now that I see there isn't, I have business to attend to." He moved to close the phone.

_WAIT_, Alice screeched, _this __**is**__ an emergency! Are you guys ok? Did something happen? I've never been… blind like this before, I can't take it! Edward, come home, I'm worried_.

"Goodbye, Alice," he sang into the phone, snapping it shut. "Now," he said, crawling back down to my body, "I believe this," he pulled the peak of my breast between his lips, "is where we left off?" He sucked on it, hard, rolling the other in his fingers once more and tugging.

He looked up at me then, because I was obviously watching him intently. It was like every awesome movie that ever existed was happening on my hooters, and I was captivated. Those ochre eyes smoldered at me and he winked; I bit down on my soft lower lip so hard that it drew blood. Literally, he was that sexy that I chewed a hole into my fucking lip. I froze in an attempt to ward off the panic and subsequent renunciation that this would undoubtedly cause.

He chuckled and shook his head, still attached to my nipple, which was really hot to watch.

_Sorry_, I thought to him. _I didn't realize I was so… enthralled_. I licked the blood away and locked my tongue into my mouth.

He was at my face in an instant, where he laid a gentle kiss on my mouth. I stayed frozen, because I wasn't really sure what his angle was and I was pretty sure I didn't want him to drink my blood. Also because last time I bled on him he hammer-threw me into Esme's favorite ficus.

"It's ok, Emma," he said, kissing me lightly again. "I can handle it."

_Can you?_ I thought skeptically, playing the busted-up-hymen scenario back to him from my perspective. Shattered lamp, violated house plant, ass vis-à-vis hardwood floor.

"I thought you were durable now."

_I thought you were a party-pooper._

"I guess we both have a lot to learn."

_No time like the present_. I lifted my chin so he'd kiss me again.

"I'm in control. And I'm not particularly fond of wolf, anyway."

_I'm only a wolf sometimes. And I'm a carnivore_! I teased.

"You don't smell like dinner." He tucked his nose into a hollow at my clavicle. "You smell like sex."

_You don't know what sex smells like._

"I'm about to find out."

I stopped thinking at him. Actually I stopped thinking at all, because he pulled his tongue down the very center of my body, stopping only once to circle it around my bellybutton and lowered his face to the juncture between my thighs.

If I thought Edward on my jumblies looked good, Edward face to face with my hoohah was extraordinary. I had to use almost all my self control to keep my hands up above my head where he put them. I wanted to touch him like nobody's business, which is really fucked up because this was totally my business. I was wringing my fingers because I needed to have my hands on something, and he was just… there. His infinitely beautiful face with its Botticelli cherubic features hovered mere inches from my twat as he crouched down in the triangle of space between my legs.

I rubbed my thighs together in anticipation. The delicious delay was killing me. Edward looked pensive, like he was trying to decide the best move in a very difficult chess game and I couldn't help but smile at him.

He offered a crooked smile back. He might has well have bent me over and fucked me in that second, that smile was efficacious. I dropped my legs to ground, let the tension out of my hands and eyed him fixedly. I also held my breath.

Nothing touched me but the tip of his tongue. He ran it once along my slick folds, and then stopped. I had to start breathing again, and it came out haggard and rough. I watched him again, achingly attentive to every move he made. He cocked an eyebrow and smirked at me again.

_That's not nice. Don't tease._

He dipped his tongue into me again, lashing several strokes from the bottom to the top of the cleft and I tangled my fingers into my hair and pulled because I needed to be doing something.

"Who's teasing?" Had he spoken? I couldn't be sure. I was lost somewhere between what my head was saying and what my vag was begging for. I thrust my hips up towards his face in a futile effort to gain more contact with his mouth.

"I'm driving, Emma, remember?"

_Then put it into fifth gear, Edward, I'm dying,_ I pleaded.

He slid his hands up the tops of my thighs and hooked them right beneath my jutting hipbones, gripping tightly, and he roughly slammed my lower body down and held it, effectively pinning me to the forest floor. I tried to writhe sexily at him, but I couldn't move half of my body.

I whimpered a small protest but quickly wished I could recant it when he lowered his mouth back down to my V, flicking his tongue in quick succession over my clit.

_Edward… you have no idea… oh sweet Jesus, that's good._

He said nothing. Good. Concentrate on cunt, Edward, this is clearly what you were born to do.

He breathed a laugh into me. Had he heard that? Oops. I was having a tough time controlling my brain function at all when he caressing my babymaker like that, I got the feeling a whole bunch was going to slip through the cracks. I was kind of glad he heard it anyway, you know what they say about giving the devil (I know, _vampire_, tomato, to-mah-toe) his due.

Edward seemed to be pretty well focused on the goings-on between my knees so I used the opportunity to break the rules while he lavished his A-game on my new favorite body part.

Slowly, erotically (I hope it was erotic, but what the fuck do I know), I moved my left hand from my hair. Down the smooth column of my neck. Scratched my nails across my collarbone and across the top of my breast, where I stopped and waited to get yelled at.

He continued the lingual assault on my clitoris and I forgot my name for a second.

Good thing I remembered his.

"Edward," I moaned. He stopped moving but I didn't. I still had a hand in my hair and another taunting my nipple and I thrashed against my own touch.

"Say my name again," he growled. "And keep doing that," he jerked his chin towards my torso.

Well well. Edward likes to watch. I was willing to oblige a show. "Oh God, Edward," I purred, biting down on my lip which wasn't even a little tender. It had seemed all my nerve ending had relocated south. I took my right hand down from my mane and brushed the knuckles across my parted lips before pushing my index finger between them and closing my mouth around it, biting and sucking.

He reached up and pulled my finger away, replacing it with his own. I did the bite and suck number on his hand and he watched, enraptured. His breathing started to get shallow and he was neglecting my pussy. Something had to be done.

"Edward," I whispered around his finger, "go down on me again."

He automatically lowered his mouth back where it belonged. And _I'm_ supposed to be the dog?

A sharp look from the peanut gallery. Oops again. Thoughts danced right out of my head and into his when my attention was otherwise occupied. But he didn't stop, for which I was beyond grateful. I held his hand to my mouth with his forearm pressed between my breasts and I continued to push my tongue up and down the length of his finger, dragging my teeth lightly along and swirling in unpredictable patterns around the digit.

He unlocked his other hand from my hip and moved it towards the promised land. I got the feeling that this was about to get really good. Sliding a long finger into me, he started slow and worked into a deep thrust as he continued to manipulate my clit with his tongue and I thought I would die. Actually I thought I was already dead. But that couldn't have been the case because I could hear my hard, unladylike panting in time with the rhythm of his magically adept hand and my racing heart.

"Edward," I mewled at him, on the very edge of my control. "More, Edward, please." He growled from his chest and continued to ravish me. _Edward, I don't… I think I'm… Oh God Edward I can't… Oh God you're so good. Edward!_ I couldn't find the words to put my thoughts to. Fuck, I couldn't even find the thoughts to put my thoughts to.

I felt like I was teetering on the precipice of something huge and a nudge in either direction would send my spiraling towards something incredible. I couldn't express what it felt like to have Edward on me, in me, like that, I was like nothing I'd ever known in my life and it was elysian, unadulterated bliss but I sensed there was, I don't know, _more_.

Edward pulled my clit between his lips, sucking gently, and hummed.

There it was.

"Edward, I'm coming!" I moaned loudly. _OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod, I'm coming, that's unbelievable, I can't… Oh GOD Edward I love you, don't stop please_… I blinked away black spots in front of my eyes and bit down hard on his finger, holding his arm tightly to my body, it was like I couldn't get close enough to him. This burning feeling from low in my belly exploded out to my fingertips and toes, I could feel it thrumming through my soul, pleasure alive in me that vibrated from the inside out.

I gyrated under his touch for another six or seven hours as I continued to come apart. When I regained most of my mental faculties, I shot him a powerful thought.

_Edward Showerhead._

He gave a triumphant smile.

***

"You look very beautiful when you do that," Edward mused, withdrawing his finger from me and running it along my belly.

_When I do what?_ Haha, this Quaker would never say it. I waited for him to squirm.

"When you come," he said smugly. "You look wild and primal and sexy."

Color me shocked. I fell a little bit more in love with him and made it a personal goal to get him to say some more filthy shit to me in the future.

I gave an involuntary shudder thinking about it. "Aftershock," I offered as explanation.

He grinned and stretched out beside me.

I was still breathing hot and hard from the perfect storm of orgasms when I felt his perfect vampire boner on my thigh.

Typical Edward, a martyr to the very core, makes sure I get my rocks off without a thought for himself. No more, friend. Today was Edward's lucky day.

He was going to have his cake and eat me too.

I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the length of him, and he sucked in a hard gasp.

_What's the problem, tough guy? Scared of a little interspecies erotica?_

"I wasn't… expecting that. And I ain't afraid of no ghost," he smirked, laying a kiss on my shoulder.

_I hate to break it to you Akroyd, but you're out of a job. There's no such thing._

"Says the werewolf."

I laughed and tickled my nails down his shaft, amazed at the feel of it… the smooth skin sliding over the rigid core, it was fascinating to me. He let out a soft sigh of contentment, of which I was incredulous. I would not be content if I was Edward. I'd be humping anything that sat still long enough.

We laid there, naked, face to face on the forest floor while I manipulated the goods with my little hands. _He must love this,_ I thought errantly, watching the contact between us fixedly, _my hands make his junk look huge_.

He laughed loudly. "Emma, you're ridiculous."

I jerked my head up to him. _You heard that?_

"Did you not intend me to?"

_Not really. I'm not sorry, but I wasn't expecting it. That wasn't really directed at you._

"Looks like everybody's dropping their guard now," he mused. "I'll let you in on a little secret though. It's not your hands. My 'junk' as you so eloquently put it, is huge." A cocky smile from the COCK-y vampire.

I tightened my grip on him. _You know what they say, Lestat… use it or lose it_.

I guess I hadn't realized how late it had gotten, it was nearly morning. In that moment, dawn set in and the sun broke through the cloud bank, tossing ethereal rays through the trees and down to earth. I turned to face the sky and closed my eyes against it, delighting in the way it warmed my skin.

Edward groaned, and not in a sexy-time way. "What is it, dear?" I asked, as I lazily continued stroking his hardened dick.

I heard him pick his head up and then drop it back down to the ground heavily. "I'm… sparkly."

I cracked an eyelid.

Well I'll be God damned.

The boy sparkled.

I didn't know what to do, how to react, but when I looked down at that beautiful, glittering boner in my hands, there was only one knee-jerk response.

I tipped my head back and howled in laughter. Huge fits of belly laughs that shook my frame and left me gasping for air.

"Are you through?" he asked, annoyed.

_Not just yet, Tinkerbell._ I continued my heinous guffawing for several more minutes while he watched me stoically. Throughout the ordeal, I never once let his penis out of my grasp.

When I managed to regain my composure, Edward scowled at me. "I don't see why that's funny."

"You don't?!" I barked at him, speaking before I could think, "You look like a transvestite Vegas showgirl!"

"Some people might say it's beautiful," he shot back, indignant, "like thousands of tiny diamonds embedded in my skin!"

I laughed even harder. "Some people… are simpering assholes."

Something about that lifted the corner of his mouth into a smile. "I guess it is a little… Liberace." He rolled his eyes. "Emma, I've spent a million years on this planet and I can honestly say, you're like no one in the whole world. And _you're_ kind of an asshole." His eyes widened a little after he said it, like he was worried about my response. Bitch, please. I told him I was an asshole the first day we met, it was about time he called me out.

_I'll take that as a compliment, thank you._ I tucked my face into the crook of his neck and bit him playfully. "I think I love you anyway, Edward Anthony," I whispered, pulling his earlobe between my teeth.

He moaned lustily. "Even though I look like a kindergarten craft project?"

_So we honeymoon indoors. Unless you get me a big fucking diamond. When the rock on my hand sparkles more than my husband, I won't give a shit what you look like in the sunlight_.

"Dually noted." He brought his lips down on mine, hard.

I sort of forgot that I was holding his meat until then, and I wanted to make a terrible joke somewhere along the lines of "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" but I refrained, even though I thought it was hilarious, for which I was very proud.

With his eyes closed tight, he thrust gently into my grip.

"Edward," I whispered hesitantly. It would be so much easier to just think it, but I felt like that was pussying out. "I want to make you come."

He moaned loudly, fisted a hand into my hair and pushed his tongue into my mouth, fast and needy. I tightened my grasp around him. He gently rolled over so he was poised on top of me, laying that epic erection atop my pelvis, mere inches from where I needed it to be.

I tipped my head to the side, exposing my throat to him, and he sucked hard on the delicate skin. When he pulled his head away, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Mine," he grinned, looking down proudly at the way he'd marked me.

A hickey? Really? I mean ok, we're high schoolers and all but come ON we're like the Super Friends of high school, it just seemed a little below us. And since when was he so possesive?

"Are you gonna pee on me next?" I asked

"No. But only because I can't pee."

"Well I can. And you don't get bruises so think about the unsexy ways I have to mark my territory," I warned.

"Bad dog," he chastised.

"Urine luck, cause I don't have to go right now."

"I hate you."

"I hate you, first," I countered.

He kissed my mouth, presumably to make me shut up.

_Doesn't work like that._

He looked at me the way he does right before he pinches the bridge of his nose, but I guess he felt that it was in his best interest to keep his hands on my naked flesh.

_Good choice._

"Who's the mind reader now?"

_You're predictable._

"And you are…" he snaked his hand around the curve of my breast, "ambrosial," down my waist, "captivating" and across my hips before gliding a finger into me, "and dripping wet."

I bucked into his touch but I was desperate for more. I couldn't think of anything but the feeling of stretching to accommodate him, the way he filled me and completed me.

With both hands, I reached out and grabbed his cock. I ran the head up and down my slit slowly, spreading the slick moisture over the tip of him and then held him still, right at the gates of heaven.

"I want you," I whispered. I didn't think it was possible to be this worked up after the epic orgasm that I had just had, but I was throbbing for him, aching to have him inside me.

He hesitated still.

_Stop thinking about it and just do it, Edward. Now, it's just biology. We already have chemistry._

He rolled his eyes at the pun and smiled, ducking down once more to kiss me.

"Please," I said into mouth, pushing my breasts up into his chest and digging my fingers into the sculpted muscles of his back. "I want you to fuck me, Edward."

Ask, and you shall receive.

Edward pushed into me slowly and looked at me with panic in his eyes. But it wasn't like the first time. It was… blissful. He withdrew a bit and tentatively thrust back in, gauging my face the whole time.

_It's ok, that feels good_, he looked suspicious. "More," I breathed, raking my fingernails down his chest.

He worked into a slow, steady rhythm that I received with a series of gasps and moans. It was more than good. Being so connected to him was paramount, but I could tell by his furrowed brow that he was holding out on me. What a pansy. Didn't I say I was indestructible?

"Harder, Edward," I goaded, "Mmm yes, like that, more." He increased his pace and his pressure and wound his hand back up into the tangles of my dark hair.

_Pull it._ He yanked lightly from the roots like he was just waiting for me to ask. "Ooh, again." My head jerked back and he laved the length of my neck with his tongue. With my eyes to the sky, I noticed that the errant sunshine had departed and was replaced by the Olympic Peninsula's standby menacing gray clouds. A clap of thunder rolled through the forest and it began to rain.

I almost imploded from the sensation of it. It was like a thousand tiny fingertips tickling across every surface of my skin. I could almost hear it sizzling as each drop connected with my hot flesh. The cool water tightened my nipples and made me thrash beneath him. Rain was collecting in Edward's perfect hair, and a bead of it rolled down his forehead and off the tip of his nose. I caught it on my tongue.

I grabbed low on his hips, wrapping my fingers into the V that was like a glowing neon arrow directing me to where the party was at, and I rolled over on top of him, never breaking the connection between us. I sat up and eased him even deeper into me.

His eyes rolled back in his head a little.

"I think you're drooling," I joked.

"I think you're a dirty girl."

I looked down at my body, covered in mud.

"I think you like it." I rocked my hips over his and he moaned.

"You look good on my dick," he said with a smile.

"I look good doing everything," I threw back, pulling him out almost entirely before slamming myself back down on to him.

"You have no idea how that feels," he said, hooking a hand behind each knee and pacing me, "so wet-"

"It's raining," I interjected

"So _hot_," he ignored me.

I ran my hands through my soaked hair and over my breasts, pulling on each nipple with a whimper before drifting a hand to my clit and stroking softly. Edward's eyes glazed over and he licked the pad of his thumb and replaced my hand with his. I looked down, watching him slide in and out of me, and it was mind blowing. Everything was so intense, like my senses were on fire. I braced my hands on his chest and rode him harder, faster. The burning it my belly was back and it was a delicious torture once I knew what was on the other side.

"Edward, please. I'm close."

With his hands on my ribcage, we switched positions once more, rolling over a maple sapling that splintered in half and disintegrated in places. Hovering over me, he pressed his forehead to mine breathing heavily as he thrust into me.

"Tell me what you need," I whispered throatily to him, "I want to make you come."

"Emma, you're… I…"

"I love how you fuck me. I'm gonna come again soon, Edward. Let me make you feel good. Please." I was struggling to see through the haze in front of me. Every time he pumped into me I got a little closer to Jesus and I was doing everything I could to push him over the edge before I parachuted over myself with very little coaxing.

"Bite me," he growled._ Bite_ him? God _damn_, vampires are fucking weird. It must be all that pain and angsty bloodlust, that's gotta be a mindfuck. But to each his own.

I reached up and sunk my teeth into his bicep as hard as I could.

He let out something between a snarl and a moan. "Emma, I'm… I'm going to…" he looked at me, lust and pain clouding his eyes.

A streak of lightening brightened the sky and the rain came down harder on us. "Come in me, Edward," I purred. Ok so in retrospect, that probably wasn't the best idea. It's pretty much the biggest no-no of unprotected sex, especially since who _knows_ what sort of demon spawn or freaky deaky cross-cultural diseases we were giving each other. But it really seemed like the right thing to say at the time. Edward must have thought so too because I only had to ask once.

I toppled over the threshold and felt my cunt squeezing him like a fist and he continued to hump, fast and hard, spilling himself into me. Well there you have it, people. Successful were/vamp sex. I popped an internal bottle of Cristal at the knowledge that it could be done, and done well. He collapsed on top of me and laid there for some time before withdrawing and casting a glance at our bodies. I looked too. We were caked in mud from head to toe.

"I think I like dirty sex," Edward mused, licking each thumb and doing little windshield wipers across my nipples.

I laughed and pushed him down into the soft earth. "I love you," I said on a yawn, twining my legs in with his and curling into his big spoon.

"I love you, first, you know. You're extraordinary, Emma. I can't believe I made it 130 years without you when leaving you for 30 seconds is unfathomable. Nobody else will ever exist for me." He ran a hand down the length of my body and cupped it around my ass, then pressed a kiss between my shoulder blades.

"Well I'm not surprised. You know what they say," I led.

He squeezed a cheek and waited for me to continue.

"Once you go Black… you never go back."


	13. Too dirrty to clean my act up

We laid together in the muddy earth until it stopped raining.

"So… you're a wolf now?" Edward asked nonchalantly, drawing patterns I couldn't identify into my exposed flesh with his fingertips.

"I know you're not the brightest crayon in the box, but no, I'm very much human right now. I thought you would have figured that out… you know, by my lady bits." I jiggled my boobies into his chest.

"Ok, not this very second, but in the grand scheme of life, you are a wolf."

"For as long as I have you, yes. Vampires trigger the change, the whole 'seek and destroy' thing. When the threat is neutralized, I won't be able to do it anymore. We werewolves operate on a supply and demand economy." He laughed and kissed the top of my head. "And… I'm not getting any older. As long as I'm able to phase, I'm 16. Which is kind of perfect. I have a thing for older men," I winked at him.

"Are you going to destroy me, then?" he asked.

"Not today," I answered, disinterested, "I'm rather pleased with your performance. Lucky for you I sort of like having you around. I just might keep you." I wiggled a little closer to him.

"How are you so… in control? Of your phases, I mean."

"Why does everyone keep asking me that? Didn't you ever read Descartes? 'I think, therefore I am.' When I want to be a wolf, I be a wolf. It's simple." I answered.

"Everyone? Who else knows?" He asked, concerned.

"My parents. I phased at dinner two nights ago because my mother took a shot at my car. I really lost my shit over it, but then she lost hers right back, crying and getting all hysterical. She's not Quileute, and my dad says the supernatural stuff really bugs her. Oh get this, Jake was an effing werewolf back in the day too, he said there were these vampy hangers-on in Forks and he and some of his friends – men I've known my whole life – began shifting. But it stopped about a year later cause the leeches moved away. And Bella knew, she fucking _knew _about it and never said anything. I don't blame her. It's gotta be hard to be human in a house full of heroes."

He winced, probably at my excessive alliteration, and was silent. I let him come down off his sex high and absorb the situation. After a few minutes I spoke. "Do you still love me?"

Edward looked at me thoughtfully. "Does this mean we have to do it exclusively doggy-style?" he asked seriously.

"No, I'll give equal consideration to vampire-style too," I answered back.

"Then yes. I love you, still. And forever, Emma. Eternal adolescence never sounded so good." He stood then, and reached down to pull me up. "I think it's time to go home. You're filthy."

It was true. The mud had dried in some places and was still wet and smeary in others, caked in my hair and smudged all down my naked body.

"I assume that by home you mean your house. It's hard to get embarrassed by a little dirt when we already fucked your mother's couch into a pile of debris. Explaining this," I gestured to myself, "would not go over so well in the Black homestead."

"Of course. Do you want to ride on my back?" He asked.

"Shit, no. Do you want to race?" I grinned. Edward thinks he's fast, I know this. And he is, he's taken me piggy-back on runs many times before. But he still only had two legs.

"HA! Do you want to _lose_?!"

_We'll see, bloodsucker._

He ducked down to collect his clothes from the various places I'd flung them in my fit of passion and I wolfed out. His eyes still bugged out of his head a little at the sight of me.

_Can you hear me?_

He nodded.

_Good. Ready… set… GO!_

I took off at full speed and could feel him right beside me, smirking. Don't ask how I knew he was smirking, he just was. Breathing hard, I pounded my feet into the ground at each step, huffing heavily at the effort.

"Tired, Emma? Your breathing sounds a bit labored," Edward quipped disinterestedly as he matched my pace.

_Eat me._

"Don't tempt me. I quite enjoyed it the last time. You're delicious."

I pushed myself farther and tried to ignore the shot of longing in me that wanted to revert to my human form so I could let Edward get back at my downstairs. Digging my claws into the ground, I did my best to extend each stride, but he just didn't tire, and I was getting short of breath. This was a bad idea. He would never let me live it down if I lost.

When the house came into view my heart fell. He was six yards ahead and I was losing steam when he dropped down to a walk and I rocketed past him.

_You're letting me win?_

"Something like that. We'll call it a tie." He stopped, and dropped the clothes he was carrying at his feet. "It's more along the lines of… maybe you should go into my house as a human. And maybe you should have a stitch of clothing on."

I phased back into a girl and walked towards him. He tossed the sweater to me and I pulled it over my head. Alice was going to shit a chicken when she saw it, filthy and ugly. It hit my upper thigh, inches from my hoohah, but it was all we had and would have to do. "I did win, technically," I said from inside the ruined cotton.

He pulled on the boxers, and held up the lifeless jeans that I tore from his body, before dropping them in a shrub. "I guess that's the end of those. And yes, if it makes you happy, you won," he smiled and kissed my temple as he walked past me. I'd take it. Ill-gotten gains beat no gains at all.

I reached for his hand and we walked towards the house together. "Oh no," he sighed, hearing a thought that upset him.

"What?"

"You'll see in a minute."

When we reached the clearing beside his driveway I saw it indeed. And "it" was Rosalie and Emmett.

"Just ignore her, Emma. Walk into the house and up to my room," Edward said quietly, laying a hand on my lower back and pushing me gently towards the front porch.

I had every intention of listening, I swear. But that cunt had other ideas.

"So he lets you off the leash and _this_ is what happens? I knew you were his pet but I didn't know you were a _pig_," Rosalie scoffed, eying my new look which I'm calling dirt merchant chic.

I bit down on my tongue so hard that I tasted blood, but I didn't even look at her. It took every single modicum of self control that I've ever had, or would ever had, not to tackle her to the floor and tear off pieces of her painfully symmetrical face with my teeth. I blinked slowly. Focus. I had so much more on my plate than the undead's biggest bitch.

"Oink, oink," she whispered as I walked past.

Enough.

In a smooth stride I brought my nose to hers.

"It would not be… prudent of you to upset me," I snarled through clenched teeth, digging my nails into my palms.

"Or what? You'll chew my shoes? That's not smart. These are $900 Louboutins and I've got a rolled up newspaper with your name on it." Rosalie laughed.

I growled at her. As a human. It was a feat, even I must say, but those fucking canine metaphors were hitting a little too close to home.

"Stop it, Rosalie," Edward intoned from behind me. "Don't make her angry. You wouldn't like her when she's angry." He laughed softly at his own joke.

She giggled and I hated how beautiful it sounded, like tinkling bells. I wanted to rip those perfect lips off her face and plant them on my ass. "Is that supposed to scare me?"she sneered.

I snapped my jaws in her face. Uncouth.

"Bad dog," she chastised on a whisper. It was sexy when Edward said it. When Rosalie did, it was the very last straw. I inhaled sharply and she smirked at me.

That was all it took.

I exploded within inches of her, shredding Edward's already-ruined sweater and swatting at her with my forepaws, howling and licking those long, sharp incisors that ached to dismember her.

Rosalie stood, frozen in place while I roared menacingly at her.

"Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?" Edward mused.

***

"I… I…" Rosalie stuttered as Emmett pulled her away from my hulking form. Edward came up behind me slowly and scratched behind my ears. I hated myself a little for leaning into it happily and delighting in the way it felt. Shit, I really was a dog.

He put his face into the fur at my neck. "You're very fearsome," he whispered, "but I think you got your point across," he motioned with his head to Rosalie, stunned into silence and frozen still as Emmett tried to elicit a coherent response from her. I exhaled sharply as I considered it. It wasn't like I was actually going to hurt her, she _was_ Edward's sister. But I felt safer as a wolf, like maybe that whore wouldn't try to tread on me when I could defend myself.

"Come on, Em. Be the you that I like best." He offered a crooked grin that I couldn't resist and I understood his logic. As a wolf I really was more volatile and he didn't want to have to get between us. I sighed, closed my eyes, and willed myself into girl.

But I wasn't done.

I stalked the distance between Rosalie and myself and got right back into her grille.

"It was fun to pick on me when I was a human, wasn't it? You're gorgeous, but somehow you're also incredibly insecure, and not to mention a gaping twat. I wouldn't expect you to get into it with someone your own size, let alone a giant beast that could swallow you while but would tear you apart first for funsies. Next time you want to fuck around, you should remember that you're not the only one around here with a _dirty_ little secret." I turned on my heel and took a step away from her when a voice I'd never heard before called to me.

"Emma?" Emmett asked. I spun back around to face him.

"Yes?"

"Nice rack," he said appreciatively, giving two thumbs up. I hadn't realized that I was naked.

I smiled widely, shimmied my hooters in his direction and blew him a kiss before Edward hoisted me up onto his shoulder and carried me like a prisoner into the house, but not before I heard Emmett murmur "I think I love her," and the sharp sound of Rosalie's hand striking his cheek.

***

Alice shrieked at the sight of us walking into the house. I hadn't thought of how it would look from the outside, Edward carrying my filthy naked body over his shoulder, clad only in those torturous Calvins.

"What have you _done_?" Alice demanded, rushing forward to wrench me from his grip.

"Nothing I didn't ask him to," I laughed as Alice collected me in her arms. "I'm fine, and I can walk, the caveman carry was to protect my virtue." I straightened out and appraised the living room. Why white? Vampires were much too clean. "Odds on me getting upstairs and into the shower without ruining 90% of the things in the house?" I asked Alice.

She closed her eyes. "I can't _see_ you Emma. Nothing. It's just… black."

I sighed. "Then I'm going in blind." I stopped when I was halfway up the giant, winding staircase, because I could feel her eyes boring into me and Edward wasn't offering the poor handicapped psychic any explanation. "Oh and Alice, I'm a werewolf now." I finished my walk of shame and shut the door to her bathroom.

I was going to count back from five to anticipate her arrival but I hadn't even gotten a syllable out before she busted down the door like the Kool-Aid guy and kicked me in the shin.

"Ouch."

"You're a _what_?"

"Are you hard of hearing? You guys tout your extrasensory abilities like you're so fly but I spend an inordinate amount of time explaining things to you. Were-wolf," I enunciated slowly. "A shifter of shapes, if you will."

She kicked me again.

"Knock it off, Stonewall Jackson, we're not all made of marble," I said, kicking her back.

"I _heard_ you, ass, but what do you mean?!"

"Exactly what I said. Sometimes I'm human. Other times… not so much. Ask Rosalie, she got quite a show in the driveway a minute ago," I smiled at the memory.

"Oh _Emma_," she threw her arms around my neck happily "you're supernatural!"

"And also your sworn enemy," I patted her lightly on the back.

"Even better! Sit down, I'll wash your hair for you."

I sat, because I do what Alice says, but also because I hate washing my own hair. There's just so much of it, my arms get tired. "God, you're weird."

"Don't you see? It's perfect! It's like you were meant for him. You're not the same, but you're somehow… equal," she decided, working a lather into my hair. "So did you guys do it?"

I closed my eyes as her elfish hands massaged my scalp. "I didn't get this dirty playing Yatzee."

Alice squealed. "Emma! How was it?!"

"This is wrong on so many levels. One, He's your brother, and it's creepy that you're even curious. Two, this whole ordeal is probably moot because he hates me right now for being unapologetically nude in front of Emmett. And three, it's not like I have a basis for judgment… but my toes went numb and I think I saw Jesus, so I'll go as far as to say that it was mind blowing. And that's all. So mind your business."

"You're my business," she quipped, rinsing out the conditioner and piling my hair on my head with a claw clip. "Get in the shower, we'll talk when you're clean. On the outside, I mean. I think you're dirty through and through." She headed for the door and I lobbed a shampoo bottle at the back of her head. She stuck her arm behind her and caught it without looking, then spun around and smiled. "I might not be able to see your future. But don't ever question my superior vampire senses. Alice chucked the bottle back at me and it hit me in the gut just as she was ducking out the door.

"Bitch."

"I heard that!" she called from the stairs.

***

I heard the door open again just as I was sudsing up.

"Go _away_, Alice, I will talk to you when I'm less naked." It was good thing I'd had pretty much no shame to begin with because this whole wolf thing was raping my modesty.

"I much prefer the naked you. And it seems my brother does as well."

I rubbed my hand across the glass to clear the condensation and smiled. Dirty Edward was sinfully beautiful.

"Come on it, the water's fine," I offered, cracking the door open and letting the steam roll out. He peeled off the Calvins and stepped under the stream from the showerhead. I reached up and washed the soil from his face.

"Are you mad at me for shaking my money makers at Emmett?"

His jaw clenched and he shut his eyes. Oops. I guess he hadn't come in to talk about that. Way to go Emma, open mouth, insert foot.

I decided to pretend it didn't happen and reached out with the loofah, brushing it across the sculpted planes of his chest. He held still and said nothing. Oookay, take two. I brought the sponge to my own chest and worked up some bubbles, then grazed the hardened tips of my breasts against him. He let out a little groan.

"There's only one Cullen I want," I said, pushing him lightly and backing him into the cool tile wall, pressing my wet body into his. He opened one eye and looked at me inquisitively. "But Carlisle doesn't seem interested. So I guess I'm stuck with you." He laughed against his will and lowered his mouth to mine.

"I've never seen Rosalie so angry in my life. Good work," he said proudly.

_Someone should have taught her not to play with fire._

He slid a hand down the length of my body. "You told Alice?" he accused lightly.

_Just facts, not details. You were listening? I don't like that._

"No. I was just asking if you did." Oops again. I was off my game. His fingertips drifted, gliding smoothly over my soft wet skin, up my sides and to my neck, where he locked his hands behind my head and kissed me so hard I just about came again. I dropped the loofah to the floor and tightened my arms around his waist. I could feel him getting hard against my stomach. I moved to grab the magnificent cock and he stopped me.

"When was the last time you slept? Ate?" he asked, concerned.

"I don't know, who cares?" I said, breaking out of his grip and going for the promised land again.

"_I_ care, Emma. You're _alive_. You need these things. I'm not going to… fuck you into a coma."

I dropped my hands to my sides, floored.

Edward said fuck?

I scrutinized his face for signs that my vampire had somehow been replaced by an alien.

He crossed his arms defensively. "I can say fuck. It's not like you have an exclusive monopoly on the word."

"Fuck" in his velvet voice was quite possibly the sexiest effing thing in the entire world.

"Say it again," I whispered, licking the shell of his ear and laying myself flush against him.

"No," he said, distancing my body from his. "Behave yourself. We are washing off and then you're having a snack and a nap."

Edward Cullen, kindergarten teacher.

"Please say it again," I begged and snaked my hand down his body, ghosting the pads of my fingers over his rigid shaft. "It's so hot. Say it again."

He groaned loudly. "Not now, Emma. I will, I promise. Later," he smirked at the realization of his newfound upper hand. Shit, that wasn't good.

"For someone incapable of reproduction, you can be such a dad sometimes." I scowled at him.

"It's the centuries of life experience," he dismissed. "Now pick up the loofah and do my back."

What a douche. I turned around to pick up the sponge. Slowly. I bent over and reached down. Slowly. I did what could only be described as a booty drop up the length of his legs, backing into his thighs and squeezing that perfect erection between my ass cheeks as I ground hard against him. Excruciatingly slowly.

I turned my head over my shoulder and smiled at him as his eyes darkened and focused on the arched lines of my back. My quadriceps were burning from holding this position but I was a woman on a mission. I tossed the loofah up behind me and it landed with a soft plop against my tailbone.

"Do mine," I whispered huskily.

He reached for it and so help me… that mother fucker washed my back.

_So much for my seduction._

"You are _unfathomable_ sexy," he purred, straightening my posture and sliding soap down my arms. "There isn't a part of me that doesn't want you, all the time," he nudged the small of my back with his bone to prove a point. "But there is something to be said for delayed gratification. That and Alice is pacing the floor out in the hallway waiting to talk to you and can hear everything. So for now… we shower. We refuel. We rest. _Then_ we f-" My breath caught as I waited for him to say it again, "fornicate," he finished cruelly. I moaned and melted against him as he worked the lather onto my stomach.

_I hate you._

"I know," he answered, and continued washing the day's dirty deed off of me.

_This might be the best shower I've ever had. You?_

"Mind blowing."

_You were listening! Dick._

He kissed the crook of my neck and moved his sudsy hands north.

Ever shower with a guy? When you're done, your breasts are the cleanest they've ever been in your life.


	14. All the King's horses

Edward's POV

I suppose I had been monumentally distracted. I was so concerned with the Emma as a wolf crucible, the Emma and Rosalie fiasco and then with the trying-not-to-have-sex-with-Emma-in-the-shower ordeal that I had completely tuned out everyone else's thoughts. Now that I had Emma fed and tucked up on the leather couch in my room asleep, I was able to concentrate on the things that happened outside of my own head.

Like the reason Rosalie was even at the house in the first place.

The reason sat cross-legged on Esme's new couch next to me, and her thoughts were, as usual, less than pure.

"So what have I missed? Besides you, of course?" Tanya grinned and ran a hand through her strawberry blonde hair.

She had arrived about 20 minutes earlier. Emma has just fallen asleep as Tanya's car pulled up. Sheer, dumb luck. Carlisle and Esme had ended their hunting trip early when Alice told them that Tanya was making an unexpected visit, and they would be home shortly. Rosalie and Emmett had headed over to spend some time with our extended "family" as well. I was the only one who was not informed of this new development. When I asked Alice why that was, she had simply said "because you hung up on me," and stuck her tiny tongue out at me.

Great.

Tanya and I were in no way involved. In my reality, anyway. There had been a few close calls that she took the wrong way and distorted them into a pseudo-relationship in her head. I had gone to Denali to stay with her for about a week when I first met Bella, and I briefly considered living there with her while my siblings rode out high school in Forks.

Then we had all lived there together a few years ago, after the move from Forks. Tanya was an ok companion. She was pretty and funny and smart, and though it pains me to admit that it was a factor in my affection for her, she stroked my ego. After leaving Bella I was torn apart from the inside out, and spending time with Tanya helped me forget that, if only a little bit. When we had left Denali, Tanya and I still saw each other occasionally, maybe once a month or so she would come to wherever we were or I would take the trip to Alaska to see her. It was nice and easy to be with Tanya, sometimes even easier than my family, because I could talk about Bella without feeling guilty or like I was boring her. She was a good listener and she didn't judge me. It was almost a relief when Tanya and I were together. But I in no way returned the feelings that she constantly played out for me in her head. Tanya was a friend, and nothing more.

And so there I was, sitting tensely with my hands in my lap on the very same couch as her, and she wanted to know what was new? How should I summarize? 'Well, I'm totally over Bella but now I'm in love with her daughter who, by the way, is a werewolf, and she popped my cherry in the very spot you're sitting Tanya, but don't be grossed out, we had to replace the actual couch because I broke it in half so I wouldn't lose my goddamn mind and kill her from the exquisite perfection of making love to her.' Yes, that was the short and sweet version.

Alice laughed watching the future as I toyed with that decision. She was on an easy chair with Jasper perched on the arm and Emmett and Rosalie were across the room on the other couch. They were all waiting on my response.

"Not much to tell, Tanya." Good one. No really, I'm an astounding conversationalist.

"Well this house is to die for," she laughed at her own joke, "Esme never disappoints."

"What's new with you guys, Tanya?" Rosalie asked.

They chatted for nearly an hour, all of them, and I threw in the occasional nod or agreement for good measure, but I couldn't be bothered with the semantics of the discourse, I was busy trying to think of a way to get rid of her. The last thing I needed was Tanya shamelessly throwing herself at me in front of Emma.

"So to what do we owe the pleasure of your company? The decision was so quick, I barely had time to call everyone and let them know you were on your way before you were here," Alice finally asked. Yes, certainly not _everyone_. I was going to hang that pixie.

"Well, certainly to catch up, I haven't seen you in months," she gazed at me pointedly, "but I also have something of an agenda. Would you all mind excusing Edward and me for a moment? I've got to ask him something." My family was more than happy to oblige. I couldn't wait to light each of them on fire.

Tanya scooted a little closer to me on the couch. I resisted the urge to back away. "You know I'm on the Board of Directors for the Association of Wildlife Preservation," she began, her butterscotch eyes twinkling.

I couldn't help but laugh. The irony of Tanya's position on the board when she personally was the greatest threat to Alaskan big game was something I'd always found hilarious. "Yes, I remember."

"Well we're having this benefit next month to raise funds and awareness for… well you know, blah, blah, blah… the bottom line is, I sort of need a date." She concluded with a big smile.

_Good Lord, that boy's beautiful. He's going to look so good in a tux. He's going to look even better when I get it off of him._

Oh this was going to be bad. Tanya had some bad porn in her head on a loop and she was convinced that this was our big chance to "make it work."

"Tanya, I'm flattered, really. But I'm sort of… seeing someone." Well that was easy.

"Seeing… someone?" she looked perplexed.

"Yes. I, ah, met a girl. And I don't think she would be very happy about me taking you out. I'm sorry," I offered.

"You're sorry," she deadpanned.

I didn't know what else to say. So I kept quiet.

_But we were doing so well,_ her mind pleaded.

Were we? I hadn't thought about her in months, I hardly consider that improvement. I stayed silent.

_I was so close, Edward, you were starting to come around and I just thought with Bella out of the picture… I knew that if we could have this one perfect night together, everything would fall into place for us._

Tanya, still as delusional as ever. Good to know some things don't change. Well a lot of things don't change, I've been 17 for like a million years. Whatever.

_I just needed the fairy tale for one night. It would have been amazing. It would have been real. Let me make it real for you, Edward._

"Tanya, I can't. I… I love her."

"Is she human?" Tanya asked quietly.

"No. She most certainly is not," I said with a smile.

_I think that makes it worse. At least Bella had something I didn't. I was able to convince myself that it was her mortality that drew you to her. But you found love with another vampire? That kills me, Edward. You never gave me a chance._

"A chance for _what_, Tanya?" Didn't she think that having those fantastical scenarios on repeat in her head for me was chance enough? What did she think I was denying her?

"This," she said, springing from her seat and knocking me on my back. The action took me by such surprise, she literally hadn't even thought of it before it was done. With her thighs on either side of mine, she lowered her mouth to my lips.

This lasted for 0.732 seconds before she was knocked off of me and tackled to the ground.

By a giant black wolf of course.

I watched in horror as Emma methodically removed Tanya's right arm and spit it across the room.

***

A high pitched keening reverberated through the large space as Emma went to work on Tanya's left thigh, gnawing it away from her body in forceful snaps of her jaw.

"Emma, no!" I shouted, reaching out and grabbing a handful of her hackles. I put myself between them to stop any further gore. She turned to me and glared ferociously, Tanya's dismembered leg hanging from her mouth. Yelling at her wouldn't make a difference, I was certain, I had to appeal to her reason. Which would be easier if the damn girl had any. "Stop, please. No, Emma, you're not a killer," I said quietly, stroking the soft fur of her neck.

_Well it didn't look like you were doing anything to stop her._

Ouch.

My family rushed into the room at inhuman speed and halted, frozen by what waited for them. Tanya's torso shrieking on the ground, missing an arm and a leg. The aforementioned arm shakily trying to crawl back across the floor to its owner. And the perfectly toned leg hanging from Emma's teeth.

"Oh, Emma, give that back!" Alice yelled, pulling at Tanya's leg from the foot. A brief tug-of-war ensued until Emma twisted the limb out of Alice's grasp. She sauntered back over to me and dropped it at my feet.

_Happy?_

Horrified was the understatement of the century. Alice ran over to Tanya's arm and began to try to refasten it to her body, cursing like a sailor. Emma walked over to Emmett, circled once and lay at his feet, huffing disinterestedly and closing her eyes. Emmett reached down and patted Emma on the head, clearly enjoying the excitement she breathed in our usually mundane lives. Rosalie backhanded Emmett, again, and stared daggers at Emma. I stood, traumatized and unmoving in the middle of it all, holding Tanya's leg.

_If you know what's good for you, you'll get you hand off that bitch's thigh. Unless you want to be holding some of your own body parts. Maybe the one you like best._

I balked at the threat and tossed the leg onto the couch to cover my junk.

At that moment, Carlisle and Esme walked in.

I think there's a word for the scene that played out before them. Melee? Bedlam? Chaos?

_Clusterfuck_, Emma supplied proudly. Yes, of course. A complete and utter clusterfuck.

Carlisle rushed to the center of it to put Tanya back together again and Esme silently wondered if the giant dog in her living room was housetrained.

***

Tanya shook and chattered in the corner, shocked and terrified as Jasper did what he could to calm her down and Carlisle spoke to her soothingly. Alice sat on the floor beside Emma, petting her gently while Emmett sat on the couch behind them with Rosalie hawk-eying his every movement. Esme stood with her arms crossed, absently chewing on a fingernail like she always did when she was nervous. I silently tried to work out the damage control on the anarchy that had just transpired.

"Emma, I think maybe it's time." She knew what I meant. She sighed heavily and got up on all fours before turning into a human.

A naked human.

God DAMN how many times was I going to forget about that?!

Emmett hooted and clapped behind her and Emma bowed.

Esme stumbled into an easy chair and Carlisle's eyes widened in shock, less at the nudity and more that my girlfriend was German Shepard, I'm sure.

I looked around for something to cover her with but our stupid house was always so clean, there was never anything just laying around. Storming into the closet, I ripped the door off the hinges and tossed it aside, grabbed a blanket that had – arms? _No time_, I thought, and threw it at her, "Cover yourself up!"

"Cool out, Prudeward. Guys," she addressed my family, "this is what I look like naked. As it turns out, you'll be seeing a lot of this because I am, in fact, a werewolf and while I can will myself in and out of form, the clothes can't come with me. So that's the cliff notes of what's going on here. Oh, and I did that," she said, jerking a thumb towards Tanya.

I crossed the room in two strides and wrapped her tightly in the blanket. "It took me nearly two centuries to see a naked woman. And while I understand that the nudity is a… side effect of your condition, I would very much appreciate it if you would do your best not to give away for free what I waited so long for. I don't want anyone," I shot a look at my brother, "ogling what's mine," I said, trailing a finger down her arm.

"You got it, baby," she spun on her heel and ground her ass into my crotch briefly before rejoining Alice on the floor.

There was an awkward silence, punctuated only by Tanya's hysteria and finally Emma's barking laugh.

"A _Snuggie_!?" she asked, finally looking down at what she was wearing.

Alice beamed. "I saw it on TV. It's awesomely bad, we had to have one. Also I got a free book light with my purchase."

"Is this fleece?" Emma asked skeptically, fingering the cream colored fabric.

"Yes… why?" Alice looked truly curious.

"Wolf in sheep's clothing," Emma shook with silent laughter and dropped her head to her best friend's shoulder. "I seriously love you." Alice smiled and patted Emma's knee affectionately.

"Well," Esme quipped, "I certainly wasn't expecting that. The wolf part, I mean. I knew about the Snuggie."

It was then that Tanya decided to speak. "M-m-m-monster!" she shouted, pointing a shaking finger at Emma. "What _are_ you? What have you done?!"

"Nothing you didn't have coming, Humpty Dumpty."

"Emma!" I scolded.

She shrugged in response.

"Can someone please tell me what happened here?" Carlisle asked.

"My pleasure. I was taking a nap. I came downstairs and this trollop was scamming on my man. Like, she was in full creep mode, she tried to kiss him! I saw it and might have lost my temper a little. You know, in that I turned into a wolf, tackled her to the ground and ripped off two of her limbs."

Carlisle looked to me for confirmation. "That's a fair assessment," I concluded.

Emma looked satisfied.

"Emma you're a werewolf? How extraordinary. I was certain that was an old boys' club, so to speak," Carlisle noted.

"Yeah I'm just full of surprises," she glared at me angrily, remembering how I "did nothing" to stop Tanya.

"She's a monster! She needs to be destroyed!" Tanya cried.

"Wah, wah… you're alive aren't you? Well… as alive as _you_ get. Stop bitching. And maybe _listen _when someone tells you they have a girlfriend. Immortality sure makes for a long ass time to get practiced in the art of skank," Emma laughed.

"Emma, I think you're making it worse," Esme said softly.

"Of course I am. This is lycanthropy, it makes everything worse."

***

It took about two hours to calm Tanya down enough to talk to her. I explained that Emma wasn't truly evil (I'm not sure yet if it was a lie, but I said it anyway) and that she was a young werewolf who wasn't entirely in control of her emotions yet. I begged her to understand how hard this was for Emma and that she didn't truly mean to hurt Tanya (again, possible untruth) but that she and I were indeed in a very serious relationship and that jealousy ignited her attack.

Tanya seemed to understand, but she wasn't really keen on hanging around the house any longer.

I was walking her to the door when Emma appeared behind me. Tanya blanched.

"Tanya?" Emma asked.

Tanya grimaced at her name in Emma's mouth, "Yes?"

"I'm… well I'm sorry. There's simply no excuse for dismembering someone." _Unless they've got their greedy little hands on what's yours_, she added silently. _I'm not sorry, Edward. That bitch had it coming. But I'll fake it for your benefit_. Emma gave a saccharine smile and extended her hand. "Truce?"

Tanya's eyes widened and she backed away.

"Fair enough," Emma conceded, retreating from the foyer.  
"I liked you better when you pined unrequitedly after humans. At least they don't bite," Tanya said dryly.

"I'm truly sorry, Tanya."

"Yeah. Well you know where I'll be. Waiting for you when this doesn't work out, of course. It's not going to. This is even worse than the first time, Edward, you sure can pick 'em. Call me when you're through with her," with a mischievous smile, she planted a kiss on my cheek. "All I need is a chance," she whispered, and was gone.

"OH THAT CUNT IS RUTHLESS!" Emma roared from the living room.

Shit. It's a lot harder to get stuff past a supernatural girlfriend.

I sighed and joined the rest of my family, ready to face the deluge.

"What the FUCK, Edward," Emma said plainly.

"Do you think I'm some sort of stud behind your back? That all the fumbling intimate idiocy I display with you is some sort of ploy? I'm practically inept and she was throwing herself at me. Use your brain, Emma." I answered calmly.

"I'd rather use my teeth."

Emmett guffawed loudly. "Guys don't like that, Emma."

She choked on a laugh. "That's not what I meant but thanks for the tip."

"That was some serious bad-assery. Tanya was like 'Oh Edward, I want your undead ass' and you were like 'Bitch, not my man!' and she was all 'Ow, my arm and leg!' and you were like 'If ya don't know, now ya know, nigga!' It was totally hot." Emmett exclaimed.

Rosalie hit him for the third time that day.

"Thanks for the recap, Biggie. For real though, coven, I'm sorry. Not about what I did to her, I maintain that she deserved it, but I should have taken it outside. It was totally disrespectful of me to fight in your house. But I mean, at least I have some street cred now. I don't feel like anyone is gonna try to fuck around when they've seen what I can do," she grinned impishly at Rosalie.

"Well it's been a long and trying day for all of us," Carlisle said. "Emma, on behalf of the supernatural, we are honored and ecstatic to have you among us. Thanks for only moderately maiming our dear family friend." Emma looked sheepish. "Really, dear, you could have done so much worse. I'm proud of you for remembering who you are even when you were consumed by… debilitating envy. We've all been there." He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "That being said, I think I'm going to retire upstairs. I have some paperwork to catch up on. Esme?" he reached for her hand and they headed upstairs.

"We're coming too, you guys probably need some time to talk" Alice said. "Goodnight kids," and she and Jasper were gone as well.

Obviously Rosalie did not want to stick around on this now-double date. She said nothing and rose from her chair, walking straight to the door.

Emmett did a palms-up like he knew he couldn't excuse her behavior and ruffled Emma's hair as he walked past, "You're my new favorite," he whispered.

She chuckled and turned her attention to me expectantly.

"It's not that big a deal, Emma."

"Edward, it's HUGE!" she shouted.

"That's what she said!" Emmett called from the foyer.

Emma laughed despite herself and yelled back, "Only because she hasn't seen yours yet, Emmett."

I saw Emmett in Rosalie's head doing the cabbage patch circa 1991 and then we both heard the unmistakable sound of her clipping him upside the head once more. The door closed behind them. I glowered at my teen wolf.

"Oh you can have illicit affairs that I don't know about – while I'm upstairs asleep for that matter – but I can't make a joke at your brother?"

"It was not an illicit affair."

"It sure as shit didn't look like a game of Monopoly," she bit back.

"Emma, she's a friend. That's all. And what you saw was the very first physical contact we'd ever had, I swear. It was her last ditch effort at getting my attention. She failed, of course. I can't see anything but you." I tried.

Emma softened a little and slid closer to me on the couch.

_Say it._

I let out a long breath. "She deserved it. I was happy to have her off of me and watching you get jealous enough to tear her apart was a huge turn on." What else could I say? It was. Emma's sort of passion was beautiful to me, even when it manifested in envy, and the fact that she could back it up with an epic QB sack and those vicious teeth made me love her even more. Seriously, she was the Lawrence Taylor to Tanya's Joe Theismann. Emma played on my level.

She smiled contentedly. "I trust we won't be seeing her again."

"I'm no Alice, but I think you're right."

She put her head in my lap and we didn't speak, I just listened to her breathe deeply and evenly for several minutes.

"She was human?" Emma asked timidly.

"Of course she was. We all were," I answered, not understanding where she was going.

_No. __**She **__was human._

Oh God. I wasn't hoping Emma hadn't caught that particular part of my conversation with Tanya. I couldn't talk about this with her, I just couldn't. I said nothing.

"It's ok if you don't want to talk about her. I just… expected that she would have been like you."

_No Emma_, I thought madly, _she's more like __**you**__ than you can imagine_.

"She was human," I confirmed. _Still is. Oh and she's also your mom, no big deal._

"You loved her very much?"

I was so entirely ill-prepared for this.

A strangled "yes" escaped my lips.

"I'm sorry," Emma said quietly, turning her head away.

I gathered her into my arms and buried my face in her hair. I could say it, but I couldn't look at her while I did. "I loved her very much. But listen to me very carefully, little girl. It was not one iota as much as I love you. You sent her a million miles away. I will never, in my very long existence, ever feel for anyone else a fraction of the love that I feel for you. You turned everything I've ever felt before into a teardrop in the ocean."

She brought her lips to mine tenderly.

_I won't ask again._

I knew she'd keep her word. She was a loving, beautiful, understanding, funny and wonderful girl and I didn't deserve her. But I owed her the truth.

She had to know. She had to have the facts so she could make an informed decision to overlook my indiscretions or leave me like the imbecile that I am.

I was done lording this secret over her, it was so positively unfair that it festered and ached inside me. Everyone knew but Emma, and she was the only person that _needed_ to. It was time.

"Emma, I have something to tell you."


	15. Bait and Switch

Alice flew down the stairs, shouting at me with her mind.

_Don't, don't, don't!_

I looked at her quizzically.

_Don't do it, Edward. Not now. I can't see the future but I know this isn't a good idea. She's had a terrible day… she saw you almost cheating on her and nearly committed her first felony. Not now, Edward. Trust me._

Of course I would.

Emma watched our silent conversation.

"Um, hello?"

"Oh, uh, sorry, I thought I heard something down here. Carry on," Alice said, flitting back upstairs.

"Wow I totally believe her. I'm so glad you never try to keep anything from me," Emma rolled her eyes.

"Sorry, love. Vampire business." I winced a little lying to her, it hurt not to tell her the truth when she'd always been open with me.

"Hold on let me go call all my friends and talk wolf business. Oh wait, I don't have any wolf friends. Stop leaving me out, you're the only people I have."

I gave her my best smile and spoke in my most charming voice, "You're the only people I want."

"You're so full of shit your eyes are brown. But nice save."

"My eyes are going to be red in about seven seconds if you don't shut your pie hole," I growled and pressed my lips into the soft, hot skin of her neck.

"Unlikely, but I do wonder what color my blood would turn you? Something between red and gold? It would probably be really beautiful and I'd try to market it to Crayola or OPI for nail polish. You know, if I wasn't dead. Ugh I'm so glad your eyes aren't red. You'd look like one of those albino bunny rabbits. I'd totes sell you to AquaNet and let them test hairspray on your little creepy face."

"You're an awful person," I mused, twisting a lock of her shiny black hair around my fingers lazily.

"Half person," she corrected, "I think the wolf in me is a sadist."

"Maybe you should get some vampire in you instead," I said, pulling her earlobe between my lips.

It's incredible how fast one is able to go from virtual priesthood to common man whore when he no longer has to worry about killing his girlfriend in the act.

I had pretty much resigned to the fact that I would exist as a virgin for another several hundred years after the first debacle with Emma. Now, it seemed like every moment together was a priceless opportunity to "mess around," as she tactfully puts it.

Everything about her turned me on, even down to the smell I was supposed to hate. As if I could hate anything about her. Her scent to me now was just part of who she was and I took it in stride and with love like every other characteristic of hers. At one point, when we had first met, it had been so very Bella, the freesia and strawberry floating high in the air around me. I would have called it almost an exact duplicate, even, but she quickly morphed into something deeper and complex as her wolfishness surfaced. I could still detect Bella in her blood, to be certain, but now it was much more faint. She was ethereal now, she smelled like vanilla and rain and earth, and it was unique to Emma herself. I closed my eyes and tucked my nose into her hair, breathing it in heavily. She was otherworldly.

It was insatiable, the feeling inside me. I craved the feeling of her hot hands on my hard flesh. I ran my palm down her spine.

"No thank you, lying vamps need not apply for entry. What was it that you were going to tell me?" she asked on a long stretch as she spread herself across the couch, yawning.

"Inconsequential," I muttered, pulling her body atop mine and grazing the backs of her thighs with my fingertips.

_Where was this guy when I wanted to bone out in the shower?_

I sighed deeply as she pressed herself against me. "I actually _needed_ a shower. We both did! That was a functional event, not for your gratification."

She pulled the Snuggie, which she had still been wearing up until that point, apart at the top and let it fall to the floor. I found myself once again with an unabashedly named Emma.

"Oh let's talk about this…" I said, ghosting a hand along her side, "you can't be naked in front of my family."

_They don't seem to mind._

"_I _mind, Emma!"

_Then it's a good thing you're remarkably adept at being far too overdressed,_ she thought, popping the top button on my jeans and slowly dragging the zipper down.

I wrapped my hands firmly around her ribcage. "_This_," I growled through my teeth, "is mine. So knock it off. If I hear one more filthy thought about you in my brother's head I'm going to remove it from his shoulders. If you won't have some decency for the sake of your own modesty, then at least do it so that Emmett can continue living."

_Last time I checked, this, _she gestured a big circle around her torso_, was mine. Also, Emmett's not alive. And lastly, I'm pretty sure that after today's mess I can solve a vampire jigsaw puzzle_.

I bit down a snarl because I knew she was goading me. Plastering a smile on my face, I kissed her gently on the tip of her nose. "Tomato, to-mah-toe."

She pushed her hands under my t shirt and wrapped them around my waist as I lowered my mouth to hers and kissed her deeply, putting all the day's emotion behind it. She pulled my tongue into her mouth and met my pace and passion while she worked the shirt up over my head and discarded it near the hearth.

Emma pulled me up so I was sitting on the couch and straddled my lap. I was hit with a painful bout of guilty déjà vu.

I put my hands under her thighs and stood up with her body clinging tightly to me. She clutched the waistband of my jeans to keep them from falling down.

"My room," I mumbled through kisses and headed up the stairs.

Esme would never forgive me if we decimated another couch.

***

When the door clicked shut behind me, Emma braced her hands on my shoulders and used her feet to work my jeans down my legs. I stepped out them and was naked.

Her eyes widened. I chuckled in satisfaction. It was very rare that I was the one surprising her.

"You went commando?" she asked, legs around my waist and biting into that soft lower lip as she gazed toward my hips. I dragged my tongue across the graceful arch of her collarbone as a response and she moaned encouragingly.

I fell back longways on the leather couch, keeping her warm body flush against mine. With a knee on either side, she sat up on me, reaching out with her right hand to pull on my rigid shaft.

Which was great.

But her what her left hand was doing was far more captivating to me.

With a finger trembling slightly, she slid it along her swollen slit, circled once around her clitoris and then sunk it into her body, shuddering at the feeling. I felt goosebumps rise up on her flesh under my hands and saw her nipples tighten in response.

I doubt there is anything hotter in the world than what was playing out on my pelvis.

She rocked forward against my stiff dick, trapping it between the curve of her hand and her hot slickness, creating friction against her clit as she continued to pump herself with her fingers. Her hips gyrated rhythmically on top of mine and she whimpered softly, closing her eyes and biting her bottom lip once more.

"Mm, Edward. So good," she squeezed her little fist around the head and worked her grip down to the base, all the while never missing a beat on the slow, delectable lunging against my erection.

She slid just the tip in, held it for a fraction of a moment, and then slipped her hand and body in tandem against the length of me once more and replaced my cock with her fingers again. She moaned at the sensation. "It's better with you in me," she mewled and repeated her ridiculous cat-and-mouse/just-the-tip act, only to pull me out and start over.

Emma pulled up once more, rubbing herself hard against my shaft and holding me still against her. "I'm getting close. Do you plan on being an active participant or is this a one man show?" she asked, reinserting a finger and then dragging the moisture down the length of me, using it as a lubricant as she quicken her stroke on my erection.

It had to stop or I was going to implode. I had never been so turned on in my life. Grabbing the hand she used to manipulate my cock, I garnered her attention. "Inside you," I whispered, strangled. I was going to die if I didn't get inside her. It made no difference that I was already dead.

She smirked at her power and ran her thumb across the moistened slit at the top of my head. _How do you ask?_

"Please, Emma, please let me inside of you."

She bent over and put her mouth to my ear, flicking her tongue out at it as she spoke. "That's not what I want to hear and you know it," she hissed hotly.

Ahh yes. The F word. I was in no position to lord it over her at this point.

"Let me fuck you, Emma, please," I begged.

She pursed her lips and lifted her ass off my thighs, slowly lowering herself onto me without either of us guiding my cock. _Hands free head-set_, she thought with a laugh as I watched my length slip into her.

I had experienced many things in my centuries of life, but there was no sensation that rivaled the feeling of my engorged cock sliding into Emma, slippery wet and furnace hot. I wondered if the rapid-healing wolf anomaly had anything to do with how tight she seemed, each time I was fortunate enough to be sheathed within her. It was like every time was the first time, and putting so much as a finger in her was a tight squeeze, so I could only imagine the sizable stretching she had to do to accommodate my dick. It was like she gripped me from inside, pulsing around the length of me

She whimpered as she settled into a sitting position on my hip and she stilled, adjusting to my cock in her once again. Though she made no movements, I felt her twitching involuntarily around my shaft. In my head, I went over the roster of the 1927 World Champion New York Yankees in ascending batting average to avoid coming right them.

I held her slim form between my hands, delighting simply in the feel of her fullness in my grip as Emma drew her hips up and back down repeatedly, and I couldn't take my eyes off where we were joined. It was so incredibly sexy to watch my dick disappear into her body over and over, to hear the cacophony of our moaning and panting and the sounds of sex that may seem inconsequential to humans but to me were a symphony. I was high off of the way she smelled, her arousal thick and sweet, and I remembered how it used to make me nervous. Now it had distinct connotations of beauty and pleasure in my mind. I tasted her on my lips, sweeter than any dessert in this or any other lifetime, and thought about how her presence simply assaulted my senses. _Nothing_, I thought, _there can be nothing in heaven or earth better than this_.

She looked down at me with lustily hooded eyes and swiftly dropped her mouth to mine, tracing my bottom lip with her tongue as her hard nipples brushed across my chest and she whimpered my name. Fail. It just got better.

_Murderers' Row_, I chanted in my head, _Lou Gehrig, The House that Ruth Built._

It wasn't working. I could feel my release rising up my shaft as she continued to pound down on me, moaning my name against my lips and bringing her hand up in the small space between us to encourage her clit so that she had her fourth and fifth fingers resting at the base of my penis while her index stroked herself.

Her long hair formed a curtain around us as she pulled my lower lip between her teeth and bit down gently.

"Emma," I whispered fiercely, digging my fingers into her ass to slow her thrusts, "Emma, stop, or I'm going to come."

In what I'm sure she meant to be a move of strength and raw animalistic sexuality, she put her hands on my pecs as she was ending a kiss. She pushed hard and fast and flung her hair back over her shoulder in a swift, quick movement.

Too quick, it seems.

Poor, sweet Emma. Lycanthropy had changed a lot for her. But not her clumsiness.

She lost her balance and rolled right off the couch and on to the floor, taking me with her. Her head cracked into the hardwood and my stony body crushed on top of her.

She kept her eyes closed for about ten seconds with her mouth in a tight line. And then burst out laughing. I couldn't help but join her.

"Edward… I think we need a bed."

I thought so too.

_One day we might get this right. You know like… no one gets thrown or concussed or breaks furniture or mud wrestles the other into submission_.

"I rather like it our way," I answered, brushing my thumb across her cheekbone and putting a soft wet kiss on her mouth. Passion, the sheer and unadulterated need to be with Emma was the driving force behind our consummation. It was not the kind of thing I would ever be sorry for.

She moaned and slung her legs up around my waist, drawing the lower half of her body into a pull-up as she grazed her teeth across my shoulder.

This reminded me that I was still very hard, and still very much balls deep in my perfectly flawed werewolf.

"I'd rather like if you got back to the business at hand, so to speak. But using your cock. Fuck me, Edward. Make me come. Please," she added as an afterthought with a polite smile.

That mouth. The way she unapologetically spoke every thought she ever had. It was one of the things that had drawn me so close to her in the first place and it pushed me to the edge again right now.

I idly wondered how I had ever thought I could give this up and I silently thanked the Quileutes for existing to kill me, because they made Emma durable and enabled the undiluted ecstasy that raced through my deadened veins when I made love to her.

I pulled back slowly, withdrawing almost completely before burying myself into her over and over until she begged for me to come with her. Actually she begged for me to come _in_ her, gasping and citing "I want it in me, I want_ you_ in me, please come inside me, Edward!" at the top of her lungs.

I didn't care that a house full of permanently wide-awake vampires was listening… what's that they say about payback being a bitch? I'd listened uncomfortably to them all go at it for years and I was more than happy to return the favor.

I only wished Rosalie was there to suffer through it as well, because I owed it to her. Rosalie was a screamer.

"_Fuck_. Yes! Edward, oh God, you're unbelievable!" she shouted and moaned and the panes on the window shook a little. "Mm, _fuck me_!" She moaned loudly and let out a serious of yelps, growls and shouts as she reached her peak.

"Louder, Emma," I whispered in her ear with a smile.

She complied. So loud, in fact, that I almost couldn't detect the dissatisfied and awkward vampire groans that sounded from various other parts of the house.

I was delighted that Emma could rival Rosalie in every way that mattered and we finished the job on the bedroom floor as I came in icy streams into her hot body.

Fucking, as it were, seemed to be something I could make a habit of.

***

Several days passed after that, rather seamlessly. I hadn't heard from Tanya, and I wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but I decided to write it off and worry about her later if I had to. It was a big change for me, not over-thinking, reanalyzing and brooding over something. It was almost like I was a new man. It didn't take a lot to realize what the reason was.

Emma and I had been doing great. We were so in sync, I could hear her thoughts from a two mile radius… when she wanted me to, of course. She still kept me locked out occasionally which was less frustrating and more sexily mysterious. We were getting along so well, it was like the showdown at my house brought us even closer.

The sex didn't hurt the cause either, I'm sure, but I felt like Emma as a werewolf had turned everything right-side up. Like I had been living in an alternate universe that had somehow just been righted. It was good.

Except for the fact that Emmett called twice while Rosalie was out shopping, asking if he could come wrestle my girlfriend. No, really, he wanted to _wrestle_ her, no innuendo intended. There were few things that Emmett loved more than a good fight and when he saw what happened with Tanya, he thought he had found the match-up of a lifetime in Emma. This century's Rumble in the Jungle, he had said, she was the Tyson to his Ali. I nearly dismembered him myself for likening my wolf to Mike Tyson.

I was sitting at my piano on Friday afternoon, and I was bored senseless. Emma had left for Forks right after school because she was spending the weekend visiting her grandfathers. It was awful, I missed her so much already. I briefly considered making a cameo at my old stomping grounds but I knew how stupid and dangerous it was, so I pushed the thought quickly out of my head. As usual, though, they found their way right back to her.

I gently stroked my fingers across the keys to a light tune. It sounded like… sunshine. Following the path it took in my head, I wove in chords and a harmony and before I had even realized it, I had put Emma into music.

It was not a lullaby. It was a symphony of beauty, energy, honesty and love. It was sexy, captivating. It was upbeat and exciting and the sound of it made me breathe a little harder. I had captured the very essence of her in melody and it delighted me. I couldn't wait until she got home so I could play it for her.

_Beautiful, Edward_, Esme thought from upstairs. _It's her_.

It truly was.

My phone vibrated in my pocket then. A text from Emma.

_Hey there._

_Well hello_, I typed back, _I was just thinking of you. How's Forks? I've got a surprise for when you come home._

_I didn't go. Something came up last minute for my Grandpa Charlie and we're rescheduling. Can I have it tonight instead?_

That was a no-brainer, I could deny her nothing. I tapped out a quick reply, _Of course. Come over._

_I'm starving. Buy me dinner first? I feel like Italian._

_Should I charter a jet then?_

_Not necessary. But meet me at that place off 2__nd__ Street in 20?_

I cringed. I knew the restaurant. It was a fairly new, lovely little bistro in town that had become quite popular.

_Yes, love. See you then_.

When I arrived, I could see that I'd beaten her there. There was a time in my life where nobody got anywhere faster than me, but with Emma I could never be sure… she was feisty and that V8 booked. I smiled internally thinking I had finally met my match.

The restaurant was busy because it was a Friday night, but a hundred dollars at the hostess stand got me a relatively secluded table towards the back right away. I left my name and told them Emma would be meeting me shortly.

I sat down with my back to the entrance to wait for her. The server came by to take my drink order and I shooed her away. It always made me so uncomfortable when they did that. When someone asks you "What would you like to drink?" there's no polite way of saying "You." I told her I was waiting for my date and she should come back in a few minutes.

It was only a moment after that when she arrived. I knew she was there without turning around, but not because she spoke to me with her thoughts. I listened to the maitre d' say pleasantly, "Right this way, Ms. Black," and the footfalls that followed softly until she stopped behind me.

She laid her hands on my shoulders and brushed her lips gently across my cheek before resting them at the curve of my ear.

If I could have heard her mind, it would have made all the difference in the world.

"It's been awhile," she whispered.

Bella.


	16. Recipe for disaster

(Two days earlier)

Emma's POV

It was a Wednesday, and it was sunny out. Edward wasn't in school, obviously, he and Jasper and Alice used to opportunity to go out hunting. I spent the afternoon putzing around my kitchen. I really needed a hobby outside my standard mythical rotation of vampirism and werewolfery. Too much of my life revolved around Edward and I found that to be shitty. I briefly considered taking up the piano again, honing my nonexistent talent, but I remembered that was his thing then he'd probably want to play duets or something else that's not even remotely cool. Le sigh, when you've been alive forever I guess you have your fingers a little bit in everything, I doubted I could find something to take up that he hadn't tainted with his perfection. But I was going to try, and soon. I needed something very non-Edward so that I could enjoy myself when he was away.

Then it dawned on me. I was already in the kitchen, I might as well learn to cook. That dirty bastard can't even eat, so there's no way he's good at this. I win.

So… like… how do you cook? I poked around in the refrigerator and found some boneless skinless chicken breast. Works for me, chicken parmigiana it is. There's no way it could be that hard, it's chicken, sauce and cheese. Even if I absolutely ruined it, it couldn't be that bad. That decided, I already felt accomplished. I turned the small TV on the counter to the Food Network and saw Paula Deen's cushiony figure fill up the screen and I took it as a good sign. That woman puts three pounds of butter in everything, and that's my kind of meal. I cracked my knuckles and started dinner.

I cut the breasts in half and pounded them with a meat tenderizer, because I figured the thinner it was, the better it would cook all the way through and less chance I had of giving my family salmonella poisoning. I found some bread crumbs, shredded mozzarella and other various chicken accoutrement and before I knew it, I was sprinkling cheese across the tops of and pound and a half of chicken and ready to put it in the oven.

Bella walked in the door as this was about to go down.

"What are you doing?" she asked suspiciously.

"I'm cooking, what does it look like I'm doing."

"It looks like you're cooking. But you don't know how to cook."

"I think it's rude of you to say so without even tasting it. How do you know I can't cook? I never even tried!" I protested.

"Because it's not like that. You don't just find out you're good at cooking. Someone has to teach you."

"I know how to eat. I think that makes me qualified to figure out what's good."

She sighed, too tired to fight with me. I love my mother, I do. But she's such a rule follower. She walked over to the tray I was holding and inspected it surreptitiously.

"Why is that chicken so crispy?"

"I battered it in this mixture of mayonnaise and milk, then breaded it. Then I baked it til it sizzled. I think the oil in the mayo sort of fried the chicken." I shrugged.

She leaned down and sniffed it.

"What is that white stuff under the sauce?"

"I put a layer of ricotta on top of the chicken. Then sauce. Then mozzarella."

"Why?"

"Because there's no such thing as too much cheese."

She continued staring at my tray for like, another year, then stepped out of the way and jerked her head towards the oven.

"Three hundred and fifty degrees until the cheese on top bubbles."

My shoulders fell in relief. I think I might have passed the test. She took out a roll of Italian bread and started slicing. "Emma, put together a salad, would you?"

So I did. We worked in semi-comfortable silence together in the kitchen for several minutes until dinner was almost ready, then my phone rang and I leapt to answer it.

"Em?" Jake asked.

"What's up dad?"

"I'm gonna be home late tonight, the mayor was in a car accident about an hour ago and he had his truck towed here, I want to get a head start on it, give him a quick turn over. That's good business, ya know? I tried to call your mom, her phone is off."

"Ok well I'll save you a plate. I cooked."

Silence from my father. What the fuck.

"That, uh, that sounds great, Em. I'll see ya tonight." He hung up. It's not like I've ever tried and failed, I just never did it before! My family takes food way too seriously.

I set the table and told Bella that Jake wasn't going to be home for dinner. She took a deep, frustrated sounding breath and sat down and I pulled the fruits of my labor out of the oven and placed it on a trivet.

Bella served us and cut a tentative bite of chicken. She stared at it for a good 20 minutes before putting it in her mouth. I watched her with tension in my jaws and tried to practice maintaining my demeanor in case she said it sucked so I wouldn't phase and maul her.

She chewed thoughtfully for a moment.

"Emma this is delicious." I scanned her face for a hint of sarcasm. None. "Perfect. I couldn't have done it better myself."

That was pretty important coming from my mother. I relaxed into my chair and began eating as well, deciding that this was indeed some good fucking chicken, when Bella rose and got two glasses and a bottle of red wine from the cabinet, pouring and setting a full glass in front of me.

"Don't tell your father," she warned.

My mom was cool now? Who knew. I tasted the wine, and it was kind of terrible, but I wanted to look sophisticated so I stopped breathing through my nose and drank it anyway, which made it a little more tolerable.

"What made you use the mayo on the chicken?" Bella asked.

"Paula Deen 101. Anything cooked in fat is delicious," I answered, forking about 3,000 calories of parm into my mouth.

We maintained light conversation throughout the course of the meal, which was a first since I'd started phasing. When her second glass of wine was almost gone, a light bulb went off over her head.

"I almost forgot, I got you something." She leaned over to her purse and dug around, pulling out a pink lacy, elastic-y thing that looks frighteningly like a large garter. I just stared blankly at her.

"It's for when you're a wolf," she said sheepishly, the pink in her cheeks from the wine deepening. "You can wear it around your leg and carry a shift dress or something in it, so you don't have to walk around naked afterwards."

It was the first time she had made any mention of my lycanthropy since the first night I'd transitioned. My heart was truly touched by it, I felt accepted, loved.

"Thank you, Mom. I never would have thought of that," I said, reaching over and squeezing her hand.

"It was actually your father's idea twenty years ago. When we were kids he had this leather cord tired around his ankle, and when he would phase there was always some God awful pair of horrific cut-offs in it. I hadn't thought about it in years and then I realized you might need something similar." She laughed at the memory.

"Did you always know? That you would be with Daddy, I mean?" I was emboldened by the wine and familiarity with my mother that I had missed so much. We hadn't spoken to each other so candidly in a long time and I hadn't realized until now that I'd genuinely missed her company.

Her face clouded a bit. "No. We were nothing more than friends for a long time. But he's like you, obnoxious and persistent. He wore me down, despite my best efforts. He once told me 'I'm not giving up, I've got loads of time.' Can you imagine? What an ass," she smiled warmly.

"You didn't care that he was a werewolf?"

She gave a half-laugh. "Not particularly. I know it must be strange for you, but I was once very wholly… immersed in the supernatural. I didn't care what he was as long as he loved me." She looked wistfully into the bottom of her wine glass.

"I have a boyfriend." Word vomit. Way to go. It just tumbled out of my mouth like an under-aged Asian gymnast. Well it's not like I could take it back now. I just had never talked so openly with my mother before, I wanted to share with her as well, and I had a pretty decent buzz on which might have tipped the scales a little. "Please don't tell Daddy."

Bella smirked a little. "Why not? You don't want Big Bad Black putting the fear of God into him?"

"Not so much. He's not as… compassionate as you. I don't need him raining on my parade. I'm happy." I stated.

She stood and began clearing the dishes to the sink and I snuck some more wine into my now-empty glass while her back was turned. It may not have tasted great but I liked the way it tickled my insides. Happy in a bottle.

"So that's all?" Bella asked.

"What do you mean 'that's all?'"

"Well you're just going to tell me he exists and no details? Bummer." She ducked down and began loading the dishwasher.

"I don't know what you want me to say. We met in chemistry. He's handsome and decent and kind. He makes me laugh. And I'm…"

She raised her eyebrows expectantly for the admission.

"I'm not in a book club." I looked down at my hands.

"Oh really? I never would have guessed. You seemed so knowledgeable about _The Merchant of Venice_. Tell me that part about Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain again?" she smiled.

"Ok ok, whatever, it was Courtney Love, and it was lame. But I didn't want you to know about him and I needed a reason to be out of the house all the time. I'm not ready for you to meet him yet. But I don't want to lie to you anymore either," I said earnestly.

"That's fair, I suppose. You're really into him, aren't you?" she eyed me questioningly, refilling her Waterford goblet with Chianti. She could be so observant sometimes, I knew she had me pegged without the answer.

"I love him." Saying it to her made it a little more real.

Her hand fell to the string of pearls at her collarbone and she fingered them delicately; a thoughtful habit she'd picked up almost as soon as my father first put them around her neck on their tenth wedding anniversary. "I'm very happy for you, then. Love is rare and precious." She looked deeply at the wall behind me for half a second before something I wasn't meant to see snapped out of her eyes. She brought the wine to her mouth and asked, "If I don't get to meet him yet, do I at least get to know his name?"

I rolled my eyes. That was a fair compromise.

"Edward. Edward Cullen."

The glass in her hand fell to the floor and shattered into a million irreparable pieces and the wine left a gruesome bloody splash across the Spanish tile.

Poor, clumsy Bella.


	17. Once bitten, twice shy

Bella's POV

I fell to my knees. The glass from my wedding crystal dug into the flesh there, and I was thankful for it. I needed to _feel_, I needed something to ground me, I needed anything but the present reality where my teenage daughter was confessing her love for Edward Cullen.

"_Mom_," Emma shouted, rushing to my side. "Are you ok?"

I also needed to think, and fast. I stopped wringing the dishtowel between my fingers and threw it over the spilled wine.

"I don't want the grout to stain," I said weakly. "Go get some Fantastic."

Emma eyed me wearily and backed out of the kitchen.

I wrapped my arms tightly around my chest.

The hole was back.

***

I didn't sleep that night.

I was afraid that I might dream of him.

The nightmares stopped, eventually, when I was a child, and I didn't want to let them creep back into my subconscious. Not now. Not when I was lying in bed beside my husband who had loved me the whole time, who had waited for my devastating heartbreak to subside, and who accepted me as I was: damaged.

It had taken so many years for me to let go. So many years for me to accept Jacob's love and he offered it patiently and endlessly as I tried to heal from the irremediable wounds that _he_ had punched into my heart.

Now, unmoving in my room, our room, I thought of _him_. And I was scared to close my eyes.

The next morning as Jacob was getting ready for work, he looked at me, pained.

"I don't pretend to know what's bothering you, Bella," he said, sliding his narrow hips into jeans, "and I won't force you to talk about it. But come back soon. I miss you." He took my face between his huge hands, smiled that smile that only he could, the one that melts me like chocolate in the sunshine we so rarely saw, and put a kiss on my mouth with those full, hot lips.

_I love him_, I reminded myself accusatorily, returning the kiss. I closed my eyes and put my hands into his thick hair, pressing my forehead to his. "I love you, Jacob."

"Most," he said simply, swatting me on the butt before he walked out the door.

He was right. He loved me most. It was something he had been saying to me for more than twenty years. He would never leave, because he loved me most. Somehow, two decades later, he was still fighting an un-won battle with a competitor who never entered the ring.

Until now, of course. And this time, _he_ wasn't in my corner. He was in Emma's.

I fought to maintain steady breathing as I remembered the previous night. How I had felt when she said his name, a name I hadn't heard in so long and one that I never wanted to hear again.

Edward Cullen.

Thinking of it sent chills up and down my arms and I held them closer to me.

He left. He didn't want me. And he lied… yet again. _It will be as if I never existed_. Yet here he was, ruining my life once more.

I felt bad for myself. I curled up on the floor in the fetal position like I had done in the woods 22 years ago and I cried. I cried for the poor little girl, left broken, unwanted and damaged beyond repair. I cried for the woman who had to face those feelings again. And I cried for my baby, the sweet angel I had almost died for, knowing the way he was capable of hurting her.

And then I remembered that I wasn't the girl in the woods. I was a woman with 40 years of life experience and I should be embarrassed for what I was letting him do to me. Again.

I didn't have a choice then. I had one now, and I was going to save my daughter from the kind of heartache that nobody should ever have to experience.

What was his angle? Was he trying to get close to me? Did he truly care for her? I thought back to one of our first conversations. Sick, masochistic lion indeed.

I spent the rest of the day on the floor, but formulating a plan, not in tears or catatonia.

When it came to me at first, I immediately rejected it. I wanted to leave Emma as completely uninvolved in this as humanly possible. But after six hours of internal debate, I realized it was the only way.

I called my father and suggested that Emma spend the weekend in Forks with him and Billy, and he was delighted. When Emma got home from school, I mentioned how Charlie would love to have her come visit because it had been months since they'd seen each other. Guilt crossed her beautiful face and she reluctantly agreed to go, citing that it was indeed a good idea, but she wasn't crazy about being away the whole weekend.

When I thought about the reason why, it only strengthened my resolve.

The next day, she packed a bag for Charlie's right when she got home from school. She went to put it in her car and I plucked the cell phone from her purse, pocketing it swiftly. Emma came back in, said goodbye, grabbed her pocketbook and hit the road. As I watched her tires throw gravel behind them, I felt the phone burning against my hip.

I didn't want to see him or speak to him. But I had to get him away from my little girl and she could never know about it.

I flipped open the phone and sent him a text message.

It had almost been too easy, but I knew that was because the hard part was still coming.

***

I smirked at the sign as I pulled into the parking lot.

Irony was so beautiful.

The name of the restaurant glowed in neon lights from the top of the stout building.

_Ciao Bella._

***

He froze as I pulled my mouth from his ear. It struck a familiar chord in me, nobody can hold still like Edward.

_Focus_.

I had a role to play and it was show time. He wouldn't get to know how I was shaking inside, how petrified I was at the prospect of speaking to him. He would see a 40 year old woman, one very cool customer who happened to be mad as shit.

I mentally prepared myself for seeing him. It nearly knocked the breath out of chest. He looked just the same as the day I met him, and though I expected it, I still wasn't ready for it.

_Poker face_.

It was crucial that no matter how ragged my insides were, the only thing he saw was my calm and collected farce. He wouldn't hear the pain he inspired in my voice. He would only get the jaded cruelty he had put there over twenty years of neglect.

I walked delicately to the other side of the table and sat down, crossing my legs and propping my elbows onto the table, leaning forward with my chin on my palm.

"Hello, lover."

Edward said nothing.

A waitress flitted over with a drink menu, which I didn't look at. "Riesling, please." She looked expectantly at Edward, holding the menu out to him as well. "Oh no dear," I said on a laugh, "there's nothing on there for him. Just the wine for now. Thank you."

He remained silent, gaping at me.

I pouted thoughtfully at him. "You're remarkably quiet when you're not shattering my world, Edward."

"Bella," he whispered, casting his gaze downward.

A few more minutes went by without discourse and the waitress brought over my glass of wine. "Are you ready to order?" she asked timidly. Clearly we were not the typical couple. I either looked like a desperate cougar or a single mom taking her son to dinner. I cringed at both.

"I think so. Do you have mushroom ravioli?" I asked, shooting a glance at Edward.

He winced, and the waitress nodded.

"Oh excellent, I'll have that." She turned to Edward once more. "He'll have the venison, rare. Though I don't imagine he'll be eating very much. You're really just here for the company, aren't you, Edward?" The waitress smiled awkwardly and excused herself.

"So since it doesn't appear that you're going to be forthcoming with the information, maybe I'll just ask you point blank: what in God's good name are you doing with my daughter, Edward Cullen?"

His eyes stayed down.

"Look at me." He didn't.

"I can't," he said softly.

"You _can't_? Oh, baby, does it hurt? I can't possibly_ fathom_ what that must be like for you, to have to _look_ at the mess you made, the mess you left for someone else to clean up. Look. At. Me."

He brought those golden orbs to my face. They were distraught and full of pain. Tough shit.

"I wish you could hear my thoughts, Edward. There are so many horrible and nasty things that I want to say to you but I can't bring myself to put them into words."

I swallowed the Riesling in almost one gulp and the waitress scurried back to the table to refill it.

"Can you just bring the bottle out here?" I asked. She nodded, wide-eyed.

Edward continued looking at me and I could feel emotion rolling off of him in waves.

"She isn't me, Edward. She never will be."

"I don't want her to be," he said sternly.

I ignored his implication and continued, "Oh? So this is coincidence then?"

"I love her, Bella."

I pretended like that didn't put a horrifying ache in my chest. "Hmm now where have I heard that before? It's so eerily familiar but I can't seem to place it… oh right. You loved me. Remember? I know it was a long time ago but if memory serves you have something along the lines of infallible recall."

"I loved you as well."

"But you no longer wanted me," I said, glaring at him. How those words had tormented me. Years of unrelenting agony and a hole through my chest with ragged, festering edges over nothing more than a few sentences from the boy who sat across the table from me now.

"That wasn't… exactly the case." He looked down at the napkin in his lap.

"Oh then forgive me for misjudging you. I was under the impression that you left me, took my best friend away, and shit all over everything I ever cared about because you didn't love me anymore. That wasn't the case? That's how you show affection? Remind me never to get on your bad side, Cullen," I whispered hotly.

"Bella, I…"

"Oh now you want to talk it out? Now that I'm not a child who worships every magnificent hair on your head? Now that I can defend myself? You sure didn't want to hear my side that day in the forest behind my father's house and you don't get to tell your half now. You shut your mouth and listen to what I'm going to say, Edward Cullen, God knows I've been waiting long enough to say it."

He pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger and gestured for me to continue.

I was a little dumb founded. I didn't exactly know what I wanted to say. I'd played out some version of this scene in my head several thousand times in the last twenty years and they were each a little unique. Never had I factored in that Edward was in love with Emma. I found myself unsure of precisely what I wanted to deliver. I was silent for several minutes.

"You _broke_ me," I finally whispered. _Do not cry. Do NOT cry. _"You took everything good and right from me and you mangled it into something so ugly and atrocious that I was unrecognizable after. You _shattered_ me into a destitute half-life for years. And now, what? You want to do the same thing to my _daughter_? Once again, Edward, you were right and I was wrong… you really don't have a soul."

"Don't make this about Emma," he said sullenly.

"Don't you _dare_ say her name!" I shouted. A few people turned to stare and our poor waitress, on her way out of the kitchen with our dishes, did an abrupt about-face to give us a moment. I could tell he was waiting for me to be embarrassed at the attention but I couldn't care less about making a scene. He obviously didn't understand what motherhood did to one's reticence. "I don't ever want my daughter's name in your mouth again. You don't deserve to say it. _She_ is the product of love and devotion. _She_ is proof that a person can come back from the very brink of existence and make do with only the fragments that they have left and _she_ lives despite you, Edward, not for your pleasure," I sneered at him.

"I did it for you," he said meekly.

"That sounds remarkably like 'it's not you, it's me,'" I shot back.

"I know how it sounds. But I didn't want to be an obstacle to you. I wanted you to grow and mature, to _live_. I can't be melancholy about doing something that was truly right. It was the first time that I'd ever done something so wholly selfless, and it tore me apart, Bella. For years, you were the sole thought occupying my mind. I wondered where you were, what you were doing, how you had turned out, and I even doubted myself occasionally, but I see you here, I see the life you've led and the beautiful things you've done, and I know, completely and perfectly, that while leaving you was very painful – quite possibly the most painful experience ever – for both of us, it was what needed to be done. I can't chastise myself for that."

"So to be clear… you're not sorry." I deadpanned.

"I'm glad I left, Bella. I am. I'm sorry I hurt you. I did what I did because I truly loved you; more than I thought I could, more than you loved me, more than you'll ever know. I never wanted you to feel any pain, on my account or someone else's, and it truly aches to know that I did so badly when all I ever wanted was to give you what you deserve. A normal life. A real husband who you can grow old with. Children. And in walking away, I did just that. So I'm glad. I'm glad you got your happy ending, and I'm glad that it produced Emma, because she's mine. I love her. I love her so much more than I ever thought I'd be capable of. And I don't have to take her life to keep her for eternity, which I fully intended to do." He rose from the his chair and tossed the napkin on the table.

I wondered if there was a such thing as a were-dragon and if it were possible that I had inherited some recessive gene that would allow me to breathe fire, because I felt like if I opened my mouth, I could torch this restaurant. I had always been the level-headed one, Jake was the one with the temper. I had, as it seems, a much longer fuse than him. But it was fraying rapidly in front of the heartless vampire. And it was lit.

I closed my eyes and thought about what I was about to say and the consequences it would have as he threw a hundred dollar bill on the table and turned around to walk out. If I went a thousand years without ever seeing Edward Cullen turn his back on me again it wouldn't be long enough.

"Leave," I said strongly.

"Oh, I intend to," he said, sliding his arm into a leather jacket.

"No, Edward. _Leave_." I tried to convey my meaning to him. He looked at me blankly.  
"Leave. Again. Forever. Don't ever speak to Emma again."

"You can't be serious. I won't do it," he leaned forward and growled through his teeth. "I won't leave her."

"Which story am I supposed to believe then? Did you ever love me? Did you leave to save me? Do you love Emma now? If you love my daughter as much as you loved me, then shouldn't you extend the same courtesy to her? Give her a chance at a normal life? You're the reason she 'changed' Edward, you have to know that. Go away. Let her be a teenage girl and not a monster. Let her _live_."

"It's different with her," he said quietly, his velvet voice strained. "She's not as fragile as you, Bella. She… plays on my level." The corner of his mouth turned up at something internally and I could feel bile making its way up my esophagus.

"End it," I said strangled, "I won't tell you again." I could feel my resolve faltering with my mercurial emotions.

"I won't take that away from her, Bella. I won't make the same mistake twice. If you want me to go, I will. But I'm taking her with me, if she's so inclined." The smug look on his absurdly handsome face told me what I already knew: she was certain to follow him to the very gates of hell, where he belonged.

I contemplated for a moment.

"Fine," I shrugged.

He raised an eyebrow, waiting for the catch.

"She can go wherever you go. She can spend the rest of her ridiculously long life with you and I won't say a word against it. But if she has to make a choice… she will know all the details and implications of her decision."

He stared at me coldly. The way he looked the very first day I met him in biology, when the scent of my blood made him despise me. I was, once again, the bane of his existence, the thing that he hated most in the world.

"I'll tell her," I said simply.

"You'll do no such thing."

"Then you'll leave."

"It's not that easy."

"You're good at everything, I'm sure you'll figure it out. You will forget her soon enough. I believe you once informed me that your kind are easily distracted?" I spat out angrily.

He winced and kept his eyes closed. I saw his hands tighten into fists at his sides.

"I was going to tell her," he said.

I laughed menacingly. "Were you? How did you plan on dropping that little tidbit into conversation? When? I can't imagine it going over well."

"I was. I still plan to."  
"No, pumpkin. You don't get to spin it your way. How you selflessly left to 'save' me, how I'm not the reason you were drawn to her, how you loved me, but of course not the way you love _her_," it stung my mouth on the way out, but a mere percentage of the way it was mutilating my heart to think about it.

"She has to know."

"I couldn't agree more. But I'll be the one to tell her," he opened his mouth to speak again and I cut him off. "Now if you don't mind… I think it's time we go home."

He sighed deeply at the impasse. "I'm sorry we had to meet this way, Bella. Every single time I envisioned it… well, it went a lot differently than this," he offered that beautifully crooked smile and I felt my heart speed up.

Shit. Fuck. _No_. He heard it. I hated everything about biology. I hated how the class had slighted me two decades ago and I hated how it made my body betray me now.

I covered as smoothly as I could muster. "Oh we're not parting ways, darling," I said, tight lipped and condescending, "I have quite a bit of catching up to do with your family. I'm certainly interested to see how _they_ rationalize this. Lead the way," I gestured to the door.

He looked as though he wanted to protest and then realized that I was holding all the cards.

For the first time maybe in forever, I was glad that I got to be the grown up.

I walked out of the restaurant beside him, my cool demeanor still fully intact. I was the only one that knew how the façade crumbled into an unloved and rejected 18 year old girl, sobbing in the undergrowth of the cold, wet forest.


	18. Evolveo

I followed him to his house. When I pulled into the long drive, I was hit with an odd sense of déjà vu. Their home was so similar to the one outside Forks, they truly were creatures of habit.

He slammed the door of his Mercedes and fell into step next to me before keying in the code and walking through to massive garage towards the house.

My step faltered when I saw it in the far corner, visibly untouched for quite some time. I tried to play it off but he, of course, never missed a thing.

"I… I stopped driving it after… Forks. But I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it."

"Why?"

He didn't answer but his face contorted with the effort. I walked over and peeked into the passenger side window of the silver Volvo. It was impeccably clean, of course. The only thing out of place was a plastic bottle cap nestled in the center console.

"Does it still smell like me in there?"

He closed his eyes. "Yes."

"Good," I said simply, passing him and reaching for the door. "I hope it hurts."

"Not nearly as much as it's about to," he whispered. I'm unsure if he intended me to hear it.

***

I walked behind him through a narrow hallway into the dining room and then the living room.

And there they were.

As still as sculpture, and as beautiful too.

Esme sat on an ottoman with worry etched into her face and Carlisle stood behind her resting a hand on her shoulder. Jasper was near the door looking both plagued and tentative.

And then there was Alice, motionless about four strides away from me.

Instantly, I regretted my decision to come here. I had wanted to make them feel bad, to berate them for supporting Edward's depraved relationship with my daughter, and to make them see that leaving immediately was the only viable option.

But when I looked at my almost-sister, the animosity melted. All I wanted was for her to bound into my arms and remind me that at one point, this had all been real to me. At one point, this had been _my_ world.

She did just that.

So fast I didn't see her, the little pixie was in my embrace and clinging to me tightly. She sobbed, heavy and tearless into my shoulder and whispered my name over and over. I ducked my nose into her hair and the scent catapulted me back decades as I breathed it in deeply.

"Oh Alice, I've missed you," I choked out sadly.

"I'm sorry, Bella, so sorry," her high musical voice was like an arrow into my heart.

I clung to her for what may have been hours before facing the rest of the Cullens.

Esme approached me first, nervously, like I might reject her. She reached out with both hands for mine, which I bypassed to wrap my arms around her neck.

"Oh Bella," she laced her cold hands into my hair and held me close. I shut my eyes and lingered in her arms for a few moments without speaking.

She backed away, sliding her fingers down the length of my arm like she was reluctant to let me go, and the Carlisle moved towards me. As young and handsome as ever, he opened his arms, and without even thinking I flung myself into them. I was trying so hard not to cry, but I felt the tears building behind my eyes. Carlisle stroked my back gently and whispered soothingly into my ear, "Welcome, Bella, it's been far too long."

My heart was at war. I wanted to hate these… people… for what they had done to me, for the way they allowed him to wreck me and how they're condoning the same for my daughter now. But they were my family, and as much as my head told to me to, I couldn't bring myself to loathe them when the overwhelming emotion coursing through me was love.

The thought reminded me of Jasper and I shot a glance to him and nodded once. I can't say that I blamed him for what happened at my birthday party, it was just nature to him, but it didn't exactly throw me into his arms either. I didn't want to make him uncomfortable with my nearness or force myself on him. He smiled tightly and stepped forward, coming to my side and draping an arm around my shoulders for a half-hug.

"It's good to see you," he said. Jasper can touch humans? I looked at him quizzically and he felt my confusion. "I've uh… I've been practicing," he smiled tightly. Of course he had. On Emma. That girl couldn't keep her hands to her Goddamn self for all the rice in China.

Emma. The reason I was here. I couldn't let myself get swept away in a joyful reunion when I was here to raise hell for my daughter. The Cullens didn't know Bella as a bad mama jama. They were about to.

I shrugged out of Jasper's hold and took a few steps to the center of the room, rage radiating from my body. Jasper took a seat in the far corner to get away from it and I put my game face back on.

"So," I said conversationally, "what part of Edward's debased relationship with my daughter is ok with you?" I looked to each of their faces. "Because I'm pretty much clocking in at a solid 'this is too fucked up to function' for every aspect of it, but maybe that's just me…?"

No one spoke.

"I've got all day," I said dramatically, dropping onto a leather couch.

Silence prevailed and Edward warily eyed the seat I'd chosen.

"Listen guys, I know that you are all very intelligent. More so even than myself. So if I'm able to grasp how positively wrong this is, it shouldn't be too hard for you. How could any of you get behind this? Aside from the obvious that she's human and it could never work-" I stopped myself. She wasn't human anymore. Emma was able to give Edward something I never could and it hadn't really hit me until then. I just wanted to leave, I felt terrible and stupid for coming here and I was embarrassed that I'd gone through with it. There had to be another way to quash this.

"We only wanted to see him happy, dear," Esme said quietly, her perfect lips turning downward at the edges as tears that wouldn't fall glistened in her eyes.

"You don't know what it was like!" Alice cried, "How we had to watch him hurting for all those years. It tore us apart, Bella, he was miserable and-"

"Alice," Edward chided.

"Let her speak, Edward." I watched enraptured as pain animated her perfect features.

"It was bad, Bella. Leaving you destroyed him and the only way we could even imagine to support it was because we loved you and we knew it was the right thing to do. He left us too, you know, he was in and out for years searching for something to fill the void. He never found it. You haunted him, every day, rattling chains in his attic, until he met her. Please don't be mad. I've waited so long to see you and I can't stand for you to be upset with me." Her chin quivered a little. "I just never wanted to see him so sad again, Bella, I had to get behind anything that made him smile, even if it was wrong."

The rest of the family nodded their agreement.

Edward looked to be deep in thought, his eyes on the floor.

My insides were aching. Part of me so badly wanted to accept this as a viable answer. The part that still shed a tear for the life… or non-life, as it were, that I could have had if Edward had simply chosen to stay with me. The rest of me was dying to fight for my daughter, to stand up for what she deserved and what I had worked so hard to give her, for what they were taking away with their very presence. That was also the part that clung to Jacob and my flawed, but beautiful marriage to him. Rock, meet hard place. I'm just the middle man.

"How did you find out?" Esme asked softly.

"Because I'm her mother," I spat back, venom in my voice that the sweet woman did not deserve. Hello, misplaced rage, I think you know my husband, Jacob? Well I'm Bella, nice to meet you. "She told me she had a boyfriend but she didn't want me to meet him. I asked his name. Cue irreversible emotional trauma."

They all looked at me sympathetically, except Edward, who scrutinized imperfections in the hardwood at his feet.

I crossed the room and took Esme's cold hands in my own. "Please," I begged, "from one mother to another. You have to know how this is killing me and the danger it put my baby in. Please leave Seattle."

No response from any of them.

"You can say your goodbyes, you can come up with any story you want to tell her but you have to remove this… this threat from Emma's life. Just let her _live_, the way you left to let me live, and _go_. You have to go before she figures out what you are!" I pleaded. It was one of the only aces I had left up my sleeve. I knew too well the importance of protecting their secret from the population. Protecting their secret from Emma, the only thing that could destroy them.

There was an awkward silence punctuated with a forced cough by Alice. I narrowed my eyes at her. Vampires don't cough.

"She knows?!" I shouted, turning my glare to Edward, "You_ told_ her?!"

"You father-in-law told her," he said softly. My mouth fell open. Of course. How could I be so stupid? Billy had spent hours regaling Emma with the Quileute legends when we lived on the reservation. I had thought they were harmless. I had thought vampires were through ruining my life.

I had thought wrong.

"So she knows that you're the reason she… is what she is? She's known the whole time?" I asked shakily.

"According to Emma, she's known since the minute she laid eyes on me." I balked at the use of her name again. Hadn't I told him not to say it to me?

"And she…" I trailed off, unable to finish the thought aloud. _And she decided it didn't matter. She loved you anyway_. Just like I had.

He nodded, understanding by reading the emotion on my face without the benefit of access to my mind.

"Can you hear her?" I whispered meekly. I felt so tired, so weak, so wholly unprepared to ever deal with pain of this magnitude ever again and each revelation was such a violent shot to my heart that I was shocked it managed to continue beating. But beat it did, loudly and erratically, the only life force in a room full of people. I wanted to get back on the floor and into the fetal position. I wanted to cry and accept the blissful emptiness of catatonia once more. I wanted to grieve my loss all over again, as it felt fresh as the day he had first reached into my chest and crushed the love from it with his cold dead fingers.

"I can't see her," Alice said to fill the silence. "I can't see anyone who's future she complicates either."

I closed my eyes and dropped my chin to my chest. "That wasn't what I asked."

Edward still didn't answer me.

"Jasper's powers work on her though," Alice continued as though I hadn't spoken.

"Edward."

He finally brought his tortured gaze to me. His delay told me I wouldn't like what he had to say, but I couldn't understand why a yes or no answer was tripping him up so much. How could he predict how I'd react?

Then I remembered that Alice could still see _me_. And he could see in her head. And he was putting off answering because of my response.

"Sometimes," he said finally. I didn't really feel anything. I wasn't relieved or upset, just curious. When? "…when she wants me to. She can project thoughts to me, but keep me locked out just as easily."

I let it sink in. She could give him something else that I couldn't: access to her mind. And yet she could still maintain privacy from him if she chose to. She would never drive him mad in either direction, with an overload of her thoughts or the lack of them. The perfect balance. Emma was suited to him in ways that I couldn't even have thought of to wish for if I wanted to, and everything that was supposed to be working in my favor, to turn obstacles to drive them apart, was proving her to be his destined mate.

I had occasionally given thought to the notion that one day Edward Cullen would find love without me, because I certainly had without him. I had entertained the idea that he just may get the happily ever after that he was entitled to. I had even recognized that she would be a more faultless fit with him, because God and I both know I was never good enough. I had never, in the one million times he had crossed my mind over the past 20 years, thought that he would find her in a version of me. A virtual reincarnate. My daughter.

Finally, the tears I had been waiting for welled up and spilled over. I drew my knees into my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around them and tucked my chin down, crying out decades of rejection and unworthiness.

***

Alice moved to sit beside me, draping an arm around my hunched shoulders and pulling me into her.

"Don't!" I shouted and pushed her away. She looked hurt and perplexed. "You _left_ me," I sobbed. "He left me, and everyone else left me, but _you_ left me."

Her frame slackened. "Bella," she said, reaching for me again.

"I know I was never good enough for him. I know that your family had to support his choice. But… You. Left. Me. You were my sister, Alice and you abandoned me when I needed you, the only time I've ever truly needed someone, and you weren't there. You were my sister," I mourned.

She stroked her hand down my hair. "I'm sorry Bella. I love you, you know that. And I know how it hurt and that you must have felt horribly betrayed. I never wanted to do that to you. But I was his sister first," she whispered sadly.

How could I fault her for an allegiance to a family that I would have literally died to join?

I let my thoughts wander back to my own family. My baby. The reason I was here. I felt guilty for making this about me when I had come to get justice for Emma but there were so many unforeseen circumstances that sent me reeling and shook the foundations of my adult life.

I let Alice pull my head into her lap as I stared unseeingly at the white wall across the room, trying not to think.

The vampires facilitated this effort with silence until Alice spoke nearly an hour later. Had it really been an hour? It felt much longer than that, but I was so unsure. Time had so little relevance to the immortal and I followed suit when I was surrounded by them.

"You've done a wonderful job," Alice said soothingly into my ear. "She's absolutely incredible, Bella. She's smart and funny and honest and witty, she's talented beyond measure and wholly disarming. We love her entirely." I knew she had meant it to be a compliment to my mothering but in truth, Emma was very uniquely Emma and I had very little to do with her personality. Certainly I had taught her manners and respect (well, I had tried at least, the jury is still out on whether I was successful) and I had done my best to bestow her with everything I thought she should have to be the person she should be. But Emma had had her own ideas about herself from the minute she could grasp the concept of it. I loved her more than I could put into words and she was the most precious thing in the world to me, but I couldn't take credit for the woman she was turning into. It was owed all to Emma.

Instead, Alice's words were fingernails across the raw flesh at the hole in my chest. They loved her. They accepted her. They took her mouthy, werewolf self into their family without a second thought when they'd all been so hesitant to accept me. It ached like acid churning in my very soul. Every part of me hurt.

I wished so much that I could put back together my façade from earlier that day. I knew it had crumbled beyond repair, like so many other things in my life, but I had hoped to walk away from them with just a shred of dignity. I simply couldn't catch a break. They knew how devastated I was, how much it pained me still. They saw me fall apart and throw a feeble defense in my daughter's name, to salvage for her a life that she didn't want, a battle it seemed I was destined to lose.

For the second time in my life, I had lost my will to fight the Cullens. Then, it was _for _them. And now… against them? Either way, I was tapping out.

Slowly, I eased off of the couch and shuffled to the door. No one spoke and I was glad for it. I did not want their tearful goodbyes or well wishes, I just wanted to get as far away from them as I could.

"I'm a stupid woman, I shouldn't have come here," I said quietly. "I'm sorry for disturbing you. Edward… I won't tell her. That's your cross to bear now, if you so choose. You… I… It's in the past now, and I don't see a reason to dredge up a history that will only destroy her. I can't be a part of anything that hurts Emma the way I've been hurt. She doesn't deserve it, nobody does. I wouldn't wish it on anyone… not even you."

They let me leave in peace.

I walked slowly to my car from their porch, hoping the chill in the night air would breathe life into my animated corpse, but it didn't. Walking around the front of the wagon towards the driver side door, I scoffed at the hood ornament in the grille, something I hadn't allowed myself to consider in so long that I had forgotten its significance to my past, a memory that was reignited by walking through his garage today. Now it seemed to mock me with its lost symbolism.

Volvo.

The allegory of it killed me. He had stopped driving his 22 years ago to distance himself from me, and I bought this car to cling to his memory, a thinly veiled attempt to remind myself both of his existence and the consuming love I had once been a part of.

I let myself in and lowered my head to the steering wheel, contemplating my next move. How could I go home and lie in bed beside Jacob?

I was still, and had always been, unconditionally and irrevocably in love with Edward Cullen.


	19. Bella's bed

Edward's POV

I was back in a familiar place. Not just psychologically, trapped in the bedlam of my own tragic mind, but I was literally back in one of the places I had often visited, in much the same way, physically.

Sitting in the small rocking chair in the corner of Bella's childhood bedroom, watching a dark haired girl sleep with the sheets twisted around her legs.

I had been there for nearly two hours, unmoving in the chair with my hands tensely knit together in my lap. It was like falling so easily back into an old habit: scaling the wall of Charlie's house, cajoling the window open and slipping in silently.

I knew how wrong it was to be there. More so than it had been 22 years ago, even. It was some sick torture to my mind, watching Emma be Bella as if the past two decades hadn't even happened. I was going insane.

She tossed over once more, fanning the tangles of black hair all around her. "Edward," she said softly. I remained still, waiting for her to end the sentence she spoke in her sleep. This very scene itself ached with familiarity.

"Are you going to sit there like a creep all night or are you going to get into the bed?" she finished, peeking at me from under a wild lock of hair.

Of course.

How very Emma to call me out in a way Bella never would. So many things were the same right then, but not the girl. There was no sneaking up on Emma. It was a reminder of the infinite and vast differences between mother and daughter, the women I loved and had loved.

I sighed, kicked off my shoes and plopped onto the tiny bed while she scooted over to make room for me. She ducked under my arm and pushed her body into me, sliding her leg into a sandwich between my own. I kissed her gently on the forehead.

"How long have you known I was here?" I asked, twisting the messy hair around my fingers and pulling her a little closer.

"Since you opened the window. I figured you would just climb in bed and wait for me to wake up, I didn't realize it was disturbing voyeur day. What were you doing?"

"Just watching you sleep."

"Why?"

"Because I needed to be near you."

_The chair wasn't near enough,_ she thought, running her hot hand under my shirt and across my stomach. She hooked a finger in the elastic waistband of my boxers and slid it teasingly back and forth along my pelvis.

I groaned internally. I couldn't help the way my body responded, and while I couldn't put my finger on the exact reason I had shown up in Forks, I knew that wasn't to defile Bella's room.

"How'd you find me?" she asked, pressing a kiss into my shoulder.

"Google," I lied.

"You missed me?"

"Terribly."

She brought her mouth up, searching for mine, and I laid it on her softly, close-lipped.

"What gives, Count Chocula? Open the gates and seize the day," she said, running her tongue over my bottom lip.

"I didn't come here for that," I said lamely.

"You're already wet, you might as well go swimming," she whispered hotly against my cheek. _Or I'm already wet, as the case may be. Tomato, to-mah-toe_, she added silently.

I brushed my lips across her cheek and heavily breathed in the smell of her, but it couldn't quite overpower the dominant olfactory competitor I was facing.

Bella's scent still permeated everything in the room, soaked deep into the oak of the furniture and seeping from the linens in the closet. It was very discomforting, smelling one while the other was inextricably entwined in my grasp.

Seeing Bella had rocked me in a way I had never expected, and in a way I suppose that's what had sent me to Emma in the middle of the night. I had to get away from her, and I just started running. Before I even stopped to think about where my legs were carrying me, I was in the fated woods behind Charlie's house and then in my old spot in the rocking chair.

I furrowed my brow in concentration. _Emma_, I thought against Bella's scent invading my nose. I looked down at my wolf, her beautifully clear caramel skin in contrast to the white of her tank top and bikini panties. She bathed suggestively in the glowing moonlight streaming through the very window I'd climbed through to reach her. Very un-Bella.

Lowering my mouth to hers once more, I kissed her. The second my eyes closed I battled the past again. Bella was everywhere, assaulting me with her torturous scent again after 22 years when I was trying so desperately to put her out of my head. It was a terrible idea to come here. How could I focus on Emma when everything about this place screamed of her mother, from the way it battered all my senses to the very memories I had in it? I really hadn't thought this through, I was just seeking the safe harbor I found in Emma without once considering the harmful side effects of my return to Forks and to this room.

Behind my eyelids burned Bella's face, an imprinted image linked to the scent that was attacking me from every corner of the room, save for the little hot place in my arms that offered deliverance, and even that was too close to the smell for comfort. Emma was lost in it, swimming to the forefront of my senses only with my eyes open and my nose buried in that soft spot behind her ear.

What had happened in the past 24 hours? In my life, that amount of time was so insignificant and yet it had been earth shattering for me yesterday. I was a man committed to Emma, to the love that I thought I'd never find and hardly be worthy of, a love that I cherished and one that completed me; I had been a void before I knew her and now my cup runneth over. Just when things got perfect, Emma had become relatively immortal and indestructible and our relationship deepened in a way I never thought I'd experience, the calliope crashed to the ground.

She went very still in my arms and I dropped my gaze to hers, where she looked up at me patiently. I lifted an eyebrow in half-hearted question.

"I'm just waiting for you to come back. Let me know," she spoke without a trace of sarcasm, which was unusual. On several occasions I had considered the possibility that Emma was a mind reader as well. She knew when to push me, when to joke and prod, and she knew when I needed understanding and kindness. I smiled at her gratefully then, acknowledging her gesture.

"I'm here," I said, giving her a little squeeze.

"You're here. But you're not _present_," she argued lightly.

I let that go unanswered. She was right, of course. My mind was somewhere between Seattle and Forks. Halfway between Bella and Emma. It was a little ass-backwards in my head, Forks had always been synonymous with Bella to me and everything important in Seattle was Emma, and now it was like my shoes were on the wrong feet. They were both still mine, but it didn't exactly feel right.

The second I felt her lips on my ear at the restaurant I knew something was amiss. There was something off about her hands on my shoulders as well. The heat that emanated from them… it was warm against my cold skin, but it wasn't _hot_. It wasn't Emma. I couldn't have guessed if I tried, though, Bella was pretty much the last person on earth that I expected.

Seeing Bella… it had affected me. I expected it to, of course, I knew that laying eyes on her (which I had to sooner or later, inevitably, given my physical proximity and relationship with Emma) would change things a bit, but I hadn't anticipated the feelings it awoke in me. I felt a fierce loyalty to Emma rise up in my chest each time Bella spoke, but at the same time my heart was reeling from the sight of her, the smell of her once more.

She looked good. Older, naturally, as was the course of life, but still attractive. It shocked and amazed me that I could still read into the depths of her brown eyes, except what waited there for me now was distant and hateful, not the devotion they had once reflected.

I suppose I was different to her as well. I was empty and detached, the only response I had left after I fought off the knee-jerk one to grovel at her feet. I don't know what it was in me that wanted to drop to the floor and beg for her forgiveness, but it was about the third strongest urge I've ever had. The first two, of course, were taking human life and making love to the girl in bed beside me, but not necessarily in that order.

I had heard her voice, of course, over the phone and through walls, and I assumed that it would be difficult to see her, but this was so far beyond my imaginings. Nothing could have prepared me for the way her scent shot flames from the tip of my tongue to the bottom of my belly, and then her icy glare that extinguished them just as quickly.

This Bella was very different. She was quick and mouthy, and even a little mean. I saw no traces of the shy, soft, loving girl I had once known. She didn't blush or stutter. In her place was a woman; a wife and a mother, with an agenda. She wanted me gone.

Hearing Bella tell me to go… it was more painful than I'd like to think about. It was so different from the Bella I'd left in the forest who pleaded for me to stay. I clutched the hot little girl in my arms to ground me, but I felt an aching hollowness within. I had never expected to hear those words in that voice and it shot a gaping hole right through me.

Why did it hurt so badly? I had Emma, she was practically tailored specifically for me, and yet I found myself still bleeding for Bella. The hate in her at the restaurant, and then the _pain_ she showed at my house, it had all shaken me deeply and I needed to escape.

I bled for the agony I had caused her. When she broke down in front of my family I… I had a hard time staying in my seat across the room. I wanted to fold her into my grasp, brush the tears from her face and beg her to smile at me, even just once, like she used to. The depth of the sensation that coursed through me in her presence was both undeniable and unbelievable. My heart danced from one feeling to another, never lingering long enough for me to properly name it and meeting me with searing with pain when I tried.

The painful surplus of emotion led me to my Emma, and to Forks, and it was almost as though I was closer to Bella now than I had been when we shared the same space. I loved Emma, I knew without a doubt that I did. And I had loved Bella, so much so that I was never the same after meeting her. Was it love that I felt again now? Was it guilt? I couldn't put a label to the emotion but something kept her in the forefront of my mind even now, as I was desperately trying to push her to the backburner. The ghost of the girl who lived was haunting me once more as I held her daughter flush against my body. I couldn't love them both, and I couldn't make a choice. The agonizing limbo between the two just might drive me mad.

"Can you take this off?" Emma asked, pulling me out of my downward spiral and tugging at the hem of my shirt. "I won't try any funny business, I swear. I just want to feel you."

I didn't believe her, but I tossed the shirt anyway because I wasn't in fighting form. True to her word, she rolled over into a little spoon and backed into me, pressing herself flush against my bare chest. I threaded an arm around her waist to hold her and kissed where her jaw met her ear.

"Tell me what hurts, Edward," she said, unmoving. Sometimes it was so much easier to talk if you didn't have to look at the person, I knew. This was not one of those times. There was nothing that would make it OK for me to explain to Emma exactly what it was that hurt.

Everything hurt.

I didn't want to talk about it and I especially didn't want to think about it. The last thing I needed was to be lost in my own head, drowning in a sea of emotions I had thought were long-dead. I couldn't surface for air; with every breath I took in, I tasted Bella on my tongue.

I responded by running my palm over the feverish plane of her belly and up her sternum to feel her heart beat under my hand. The rhythm of her life mirrored her personality so closely: impatient but steady.

She moaned, covering my hand between her breasts with her own, and arched her back, nestling her curvaceous butt up against my crotch. I went full-staff immediately and pressed my erection between the cheeks of her ass.

Well this was… not ok, to say the least. I truly didn't show up here so that I could stick it in her, I swear. But there she was, a delicious temptation that promised salvation from the prison of my thoughts. Might as well go swimming, indeed. It wasn't a lie when I said my kind was easily distracted after all, and Emma was the perfect diversion. If I needed to get Bella out of my head then I had to get Emma into my pants. I wanted to get lost in a moment, I wanted to feel with my body and not with my heart. I wanted to fuck.

Yeah, I said it.

"Heyo," she said, threading her fingers through mine and drawing our hands back down to her stomach, "you didn't come here for that."

If there was one thing that I knew about Emma, it was that she needed very little encouragement to be in the mood for sex. "Remind me again what you said about already being wet…?" I asked softly as I slid my hand into her panties. I ran a finger along her slick flesh and gently dipped it in her. Exactly as promised. I laughed into her neck. "You really do always tell the truth."

"Yeah and by the way, I chopped down your cherry tree too." She ground her butt against me again and I moaned involuntarily.

"Think you could keep it down over there, Ron Jeremy? Charlie's asleep in the next room and he has a gun."

"I don't fear man-made weaponry," I mumbled into her shoulder, silently balking at the use of his name. Charlie. Now _that _would be pure comedy… Charlie walking in to see me humping his granddaughter, decades after I ruined the first generation. I shuddered at the thought.

"I know, my man's so tough," she acquiesced, letting my hand creep back up her torso until her breast was in my palm.

She smoothed her hair off of her neck and tilted her head like an offering to me. It was all the invitation I needed to bring my lips down to the L where it met her shoulder and I sucked gently.

I gently twisted her nipple between my fingers and she moaned again.

"Shh," I whispered into her scapula. "Remember? Your fath-" Seriously? Now was not the time for a Freudian slip. "grandfather will hear you," I amended without missing a beat. I scanned her for any sign of recognition and found none. So evidently I _could_ catch a break every once in a while.

"I don't care," she said. "Can't you just glamour him into forgetting?"

"Can't _you_ give up believing smutty vampire lies on premium cable? _True Blood_'s not real." I pressed wet kisses from her hairline to as far down her spine as I could reach.

"Yes, disco-ball vampires are much more realistic."

"Which one of us has proven our existence to you? It doesn't look like Bill Compton's in your bed."

_Not my bed_, she thought lazily, reaching behind to undo my belt buckle.

Anxiety pinged through me. I was comically aware of whose bed this was. I was high off Bella's scent and every minute reminder ground the sharp fragrance deeper into my brain. With my eyes closed, it boggled my mind. Bell's scent, Emma's body, it was too much and my senses were sparking electricity.

Emma slipped her hand inside my boxer briefs and gently tugged at my length then trailed her fingernails up and down the sensitive skin. A growl slipped out and I kicked off all my clothes from the waist down.

"Shh…" she whispered gently.

Charlie. Gah, this was a terrible idea. I pinched the bridge of my nose and felt my eyebrows knit together. Her face appeared behind my closed lids and I snapped them back open. _Be present_, I reminded myself.

At present, my only viable option was to escape the horror show that had become my life. I had to do something that could only be done with Emma. And if Charlie overheard, well… As long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.

I hooked my fingers behind her hip bones and hoisted her up onto all fours.

She tossed her hair and twisted her head over her left shoulder, biting down on her lip and eying me lustily, and it was beyond sexy.

_Not vampire style?_ She thought with a smirk.

"Home-field advantage," I mumbled, grabbing hold of the cotton panties and ripping them away from her body before she could remind me that this was, indeed, not her home.

What was wrong with me? How were Bella and Emma so interchangeable in my mind?

I decided that was a can of worms I didn't want to touch when I could be touching a naked girl instead. Wrapping my hands around the front of her thighs, I pulled her back towards me until the tip of my dick pressed against her slippery folds, which yielded to envelop me in her unparalleled heat.

Pulling out slowly, I sunk my cock into her again, and then again after that, picking up the pace slightly each time, amazed at the depth and control the position granted me. Control was what I desperately needed.

She whimpered quietly. "More please," she whispered without turning around.

I dug my fingers deeper into her flesh to brace her and pumped into her faster and harder. I could tell she was struggling to stay quiet. There was nothing quiet about Emma, and she actively tried to wake the dead when we had sex. The actual dead, I mean. The undead were already deliriously aware of her presence.

She looked at me from over her shoulder again, still biting down hard on that soft lower lip with the efforts of her silence etched into lines on her forehead. She clenched her eyes closed with the strain of it and I envied her, knowing what would happen if I closed mine.

The thought of Bella, even fleeting, made me angry. She was not supposed to be a part of this, this was Emma's and mine. Irrationally, I felt rage flood my body and I pushed myself into Emma, rough and unreserved, grunting each time I slammed her so hard that the rounded cheeks of her ass were forcefully flattened against my pelvis.

Emma dropped her chin to her chest and I got even more infuriated. How was I supposed to remember who she was when I couldn't even see her face? From behind, she could be almost anyone! _But you know who she bears the most striking resemblance to_, my conscience taunted.

I hated that this was happening. Who was I? Who was she? It was all wrong and it had to stop. But while my mind told me to halt, my hips were galvanized and out of my control, burying my stiff dick into her over and over.

She was quiet. She didn't talk dirty or moan or try to touch me and she hadn't moved since the last time she looked at me. It was, characteristically, very un-Emma and this made me angry as well. _Fight_, I urged her with my mind, _make me remember who you are_!

It was ridiculous and I couldn't stop it. Why should the task fall on her when I'm clearly the one with all the issues? And yet, in my mind, all the lines were blurring and I couldn't make out the exact parameters of the lovely dark haired girl in front of me. Her face, her personality, her beautiful mind, were all swallowed up in the scent that conquered the room and my every thought.

I reached out and grabbed a fistful of her hair, digging my hand into it and wrapping the length around my wrist, and I pulled, hard. Because I was mad and because I wanted to see who she was and because the control was slipping from between my fingers so I needed to replace it with something else.

She gasped, but didn't speak, and I still couldn't see her face. _Bring me back_, my mind pleaded, aching to look into her eyes.

I continued to fuck her as she stayed motionless before me.

My brain ran laps around the room, searching for one of her errant thoughts, anything to confirm to my uncertain senses that it was two decades later, with a different girl in a different world and that the room was just scenery, the smell just a terrible emotional deterrent.

"Please," I whispered to her. I just wanted reassurance and I didn't care what form it took. I was literally begging her to make me know the difference.

"Edward, I love you," she whispered back.

No, no, no! Not what I needed! I couldn't stand her speaking so quietly, making her voice nearly undistinguishable, saying gentle words of devotion and not a snarky pun. I couldn't stand her speaking at all! I wanted to hear her head, the way I couldn't do with the other one! I found no solace in this.

I collapsed onto her back, desperate for the contact, anything to ground me, and got nothing but a delicate moan and a view from over her shoulder of her white-knuckled grip on a pillow as she struggled with the torturous silence our location imparted on us. The deliciously offensive fragrance surrounding us was only amplified by her sweat and my proximity to her. It completed the perfect storm to my torment.

In that moment, all I needed to do was put my teeth in something.

By the grace of a God who surely despised me, my mouth found the pillow and not the flesh of the girl and my teeth ripped through the casing violently, sending a shower of down high up into the air.

It felt good to be shamelessly aggressive and I grabbed another from under her elbow, tearing it apart wildly and throwing restriction out the very same window that I always seemed to find myself surreptitiously sneaking into.

I was suffocating in the madness and found that as collateral damage, one could do worse than bite a pillow… or two.

Finally, I pulled out and flipped her over onto her back, seeking a recognition that I was _just_ this side of crazy over. But her face was obscured by tangles of dark hair juxtaposed with soft white feathers, and she remained a mystery to me.

I was tired of fighting it.

I gave up then.

I closed my eyes, and she was waiting for me.

I allowed one haunt me as I slid myself back into the other and slowly, quietly, lovingly coaxed her to orgasm and came inside of her while feathers loftily floated to the ground all around us.

No words were spoken for the remainder of the evening.

Moments later, she quietly settled into sleep beside me and her breathing slowed and evened out as she dropped blissfully into unconsciousness with her legs twined around mine and her face tucked into my chest, hidden once again.

I stared, unblinking, at the ceiling above us, knowing the torture that waited on the other side of my eyelids.

I was unsure of who I had just made love to.


	20. Discovery channel

Bella's POV

I envied him the luxury of leaving. I'd told him he didn't have to, but I was still jealous that he even had the option. What I wouldn't give to run screaming from this place and never have to come back. But I didn't get that kind of choice.

I was bound to my life as a wife and a mother while I helplessly longed for a 17 year old boy. The boy I loved, who loved my girl.

There simply weren't words for how wrong this was.

And now, leaving the Cullens' house after the second most painful experience of my life, I drove down the road in uneasy silence. This agony was eclipsed only by the first time he left me, and it weighed so heavily on me that I could feel myself sinking with each passing second.

I contemplated my next move, assured that nothing I did would be the right thing.

I knew I had to go home. Jacob would be waiting for me, probably in bed by now. I just didn't know if I had the fortitude to hold it together until I could be alone again. The deep recesses of my conscience was the only place where I could crawl into the desolate nothingness of my thoughts and mourn for everything that shouldn't be… and everything that wasn't.

I pulled up slowly in front of the house and cut the ignition, letting the engine get cold before I put together the strength to go inside. There were no lights on and I was grateful that Jake wasn't waiting up. There was no excuse for my behavior, and there especially wasn't one that I wanted to share with my husband.

He didn't deserve this. He deserved so much more than me. A new wave of sadness hit me when I realized I wasn't good enough for anyone. Broken by one to be made unacceptable for the other. I bit down hard on my trembling lower lip to stave off tears that struggled to escape anew.

Once in the bedroom, I peeled off my clothes and slipped a tattered, holey nightshirt over my head. Jacob's back was to me, his hulking figure like a boulder on the other side of the bed and I pulled back the covers and slid in as motionlessly as possible to keep from disturbing him. I pulled the blankets up to my chin and let my impossibly heavy eyelids close.

"You're home late," he said, his voice gruff from sleep.

I didn't answer. I had told him I was having dinner with Jessica Newton, nee Stanley, in Portland and that's why I would be out tonight.

He rolled over and cracked an eye open. "Bella? You ok?"

Distress transcended my poor attempt at sleep and he must have seen it on my face.

"Yeah," I said quietly.

"Rough night?" he asked curiously.

"Yes," I answered, strangled.

He didn't say anything else. My behavior of late made him uncomfortable, I'm certain. I've often sensed Jacob's awkwardness at my emotions… it was as if he had always worried this would happen, that I'd regress into the shell of a human I was after Edward left, the one that Jake took years to chip away at. Now here it was, happening before his eyes and he didn't even know.

He slung an arm around my waist and flipped me onto my side, wrapping his big hand around my ribcage and dragging me across the bed into his grasp. I felt heat emanating off of his broad chest into my back; though the wolf in him was long dead, he was always just a few degrees above 98.6. My own personal sun.

"I'm sorry you're having such a tough time," he side finally, placing soft, lazy kisses behind my ear.

It made it worse for him to be so understanding, to be so absolutely perfect for me in every single way, and that I continuously shied away from it and made choices that would complicate my life in ways I couldn't fathom.

Half of me was Team Edward, the half that clung to the past, the girl who was crying and tortured and had crumbled to pieces at the sight of him. The other half belonged to Jacob, the proud woman that I'd become and I knew that I truly loved him… for who he was, for what he had given me, for our life together.

I wished more than anything that half was enough.

"I love you, Bella," he mumbled, drifting back into sleep.

"Most," I whispered back as an answer, hating myself for the lie that the one-syllable word dragged me into. My eyes shut once more, and I fell headfirst into a dream starring the boy who was the most everything that I had ever met.

***

Jake was already downstairs when I got up the next morning. I pulled on a bathrobe and met him in the kitchen where he was hunched over a mug of coffee and the sports section at the breakfast bar.

"Morning," I said quietly, dipping my head to kiss his cheek.

He stiffened at my touch and said nothing.

I assumed this was because of my wounded puppy act the past few days, and I figured he was tired of it. I could have guessed this would've happened and I had already decided to fake normalcy all day today for his benefit. Jake wasn't the one who needed to be punished. But my act must have been a little slow out of the gate because now he was cranky.

I was going to push through it anyway, though. I pulled some bacon and eggs out of the fridge and heated up the griddle on the stove.

"Hungry?" I asked brightly.

He grunted without looking up from the newspaper.

Well I can't say I didn't deserve it. I'd been cold and distant and emotionally adulterous, though he didn't know about the last part. I sighed and set to making his breakfast, hoping his mood would perk up once there was some greasy protein in his belly. Pork fat does funny things to a man.

A few minutes of awkward silence later, I set a plate in front of him and peeked at the headline he was reading.

"Seahawks playing today?" I asked innocently, eyeing the cover story.

"Nothing gets past you," he grumbled back.

I turned around so he wouldn't see me roll my eyes and got myself a cup of coffee. Sitting across from him, I stared into the mug and watched the cream shoot swirly patterns up to the surface while I poured.

"How's your breakfast?" I asked without looking at him, knowing the kind of response I was going to get before the question even made its way out of my mouth.

Jake pushed the empty plate to the side and the fork clattered loudly to the floor. He scraped his chair across the floor and stood, turning his back on me as he walked through the doorway without picking up the silverware.

"Jake, where are you going?"

"Work," he said over his shoulder without stopping.

"But it's Saturday," I protested. He and I had spent every Saturday together for the past quarter of a century. Jake _never_ worked on Saturdays.

"I don't care to look at you right now," he said casually, continuing down the hallway.

"Jacob," I followed quickly after him, grabbing his arm. He spun around and glared at me. Ok, I know I haven't exactly been a Stepford Wife the past few days, but this was uncalled for. Last night he had been so concerned and now he had this morose attitude and was turning his back on me. Et tu, Jacob?

"What is the matter with you?!" I demanded.

"Oh it's nothing the matter with _me_," he countered cruelly.

"Well what's the problem?!" I was shouting. It was unnecessary but he was hurting me and I couldn't stand it, not after the blunt trauma I received last night.

"Did you have sweet dreams last night, Bella?" he sneered.

Oh God.

"I think you might have. You did a whole lot of talking in your sleep."

***

Emma's POV

He was gone by the time I woke up. I sensed his absence before I opened my eyes; even in unconsciousness I was wholly aware of him.

Leave it to Edward not to stick around for the awkward morning-after pillow talk following last night's Charlie Chaplin silent sex.

I guess I should amend that to "annihilated pillow" talk. What was up with him? Some weirdly quiet fucking from behind and a flock's worth of goose down later, I was beginning to deconstruct the goings-on of the boudoir the previous evening.

It was tough for me, keeping my GD mouth shut. I really don't have a filter and I never had to keep it down during sex before because it's always been outside or in a house full of weirdly alert semi-people who politely divert their attention from me. Last night it took all my self control not to bark out all the filthy shit I had lined up in my head. I was concentrating so hard on not moaning or whining or accidentally giving orders that I'd be surprised if he heard any of what went on in my mind. I had been consumed by passion and the necessity of hiding it.

That made it sort of strange for me, we had never had that kind of encounter before. But I was willing to chalk it up to a learning experience and take it in stride with all the other sex stuff I was finding out via my relationship with Edward.

I got the feeling it wasn't exactly the same for him. He went somewhere dark and twisty for a bit, and that made me ache for him a little. I knew he wouldn't tell me, thus the reason he bolted long before dawn, but I wished I could help. It has to be hard to have over a century's worth of angst-y drama under your belt with nobody to help shoulder the burden, though. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, and while I had no idea what it was, it was torturing the shit out of my moody, broody, vampire.

Just when he was starting to be fun.

Le sigh. Whatever.

I went downstairs to eat six dozen eggs or whatever else was in the fridge because I'm a fucking werewolf and I consume like one million calories a day.

"Em!" Charlie greeted me brightly. "Sleep good?"

"Like the dead," I said wryly, opening the refrigerator and drinking right from the orange juice carton.

"What do you think about heading down to La Push today? Your _other_ grandpa is dying to see you," he said darkly. Charlie and Billy had been best friends for nearly fifty years and were happier than pigs in shit when my parents got married, but they thought it was hilarious to try to one-up each other as my grandfather. And I love a good pissing contest as much as the next guy, so I usually facilitate these efforts whenever I can… plus I wind up getting presents out of it.

But spending time with the Quileutes at this particular juncture in time didn't seem like such a good idea. I hadn't been to the reservation since I went all werewolves of London on Seattle, and I didn't want them to sniff me out. Jake swore up and down that he made no mention of my "condition" to the elders but I didn't know if I had some weird doggy pheromones or something leaking out of my armpits that only old lupines were privy to. It wasn't worth the risk. I didn't feel like getting outed, so I thought it would be best to hang around with the clueless human grandpa today.

"That might cut into time with my favorite one," I said thoughtfully.

Charlie beamed. "The Seahawks are playing this afternoon."

"I'll make the Buffalo wings, you get the beer."

"Get some chili going too, kid," he said absently as he flipped through the paper, ignoring my plight for underage drinking.

"You got it, Chief."

***

An hour later, I wanted to call my mom and ask her what was in chili. I have no fucking clue… meat, beans and spicy? I went upstairs and dug around in my bag but I couldn't find my phone. It wasn't out in the Mustang either. Hmm. I must have left it at home but I could have sworn I put it in my purse before I left. One of the many unsolved mysteries in the world… perhaps it had gone the way of Jimmy Hoffa. I'd have to remember to alert the Teamsters.

Sans BlackBerry, I decided to check up on the other communication venues that I usually neglect. I fired up the laptop that my parents gave to Charlie for Christmas two years ago in an attempt to lure him into the 21st century… to no avail, of course. To date, I am the only person who has ever used it… hence the reason it's kept on the desk of the unoccupied bedroom that used to be my mother's. Charlie just communicates better in muttered awkwardness.

Well hello, Yahoo! I skimmed the lead stories and found nothing that particularly enticed me. What can I say, my kind of news is found on Perez Hilton. Email… none. Not even spam offering to enlarge my penis. That was kind of disheartening, it had been almost a week since I last logged on. At least I could find solace in the idea that if I died, there wouldn't be a whole lot of loose ends to tie up.

On to Facebook… I smiled at my profile photo; me as Pocahontas on Halloween. Edward had said I looked like the Indian from the Village People. I called him an insensitive pale-face and berated him and his people for encroaching on our land… whilst reminding him that we prefer to be recognized as "Native Americans." He did the YMCA and told me that he took no part in Manifest Destiny, he wasn't even born 'til 1901.

Like that made him young or something. Stupid, ancient boyfriend.

One event invitation? Well, well, well, looks like someone's popularity is on the rise! As if I would ever hang out with the dorkis malorkis humans in my grade. I was a supernatural snob.

Out of curiosity, I clicked the link. It was just as I suspected. Mallory Lauren, the Regina George of Wilson HS, was having a party tonight because her parents were out of town. Her army of skanks was determined to get drunk and rub themselves up against pubescent wieners who would, undoubtedly, jackhammer fuck them momentarily, blow their loads early, and pass out in a pool of their own vomit.

No, seriously, sign me up.

I rolled my eyes at the computer screen and logged out. I'm like, so totally wise beyond my years. Edward's old-mannishness must be rubbing off on me.

Blowing out a sigh, I pushed my chair away from the desk and remembered what had started this whole chain reaction that led to me logging online in the first place: no phone, no Bella, no chili recipe.

I could have just looked it up on the internet, I know. They don't call it the information super highway for nothing. But it just felt like quitting to me, I don't know why. I always try to exhaust every other avenue before I give in to the crutch of my generation. It's a personal betterment thing.

Happily, though, as I spun in the executive chair that so horrifically conflicted the design scheme of the room (read: painfully untouched since the 1980s) I realized there was a bookcase against the far wall, across from my bed and lined up parallel to the hallway. You know how you could've been some place nine thousand times and never really _seen_ it before? That's what this was. In fact, that happens to me quite a bit… it seems that I'm particularly unobservant.

Anyway, despite the countless days and nights that I had spent here throughout the course of my childhood, I had never taken note of the bookcase before, though its presence made sense. My mom had always been an impressive bibliophile. I was certain that I could find what I needed.

I got up to shuffle across the room.

I promptly tripped and sprawled my clumsy ass down, face first into the ground to eat hardwood. _Emma Grace_, I scoffed with my thoughts, _by name if not by practice_. I was about as graceful as a wombat strung out on crystal meth.

"Ugh," I said to no one in particular.

I listened for Charlie downstairs and heard him turning the page of the newspaper at the table. It was horrifying that between Bella and myself this sort of accident was commonplace enough that he didn't bat an eye. I made a mental note to take ballet or yoga, anything to give me some semblance of balance or stability.

I rolled onto my back, wiggled my fingers and toes to make sure I still had use of my extremities, realized how pointless it was because they would have been healing already if I'd done any damage, and sighed again. At least Edward wasn't here to see this. He was so disgustingly adept and he found my gawkish blundering hilarious. These were pretty much the only times I was ever thankful for his absence.

The floorboard creaked noisily as I raised my weight off of it and I felt it shifting beneath me. Oh that fucking figures, it's not bad enough that I can't walk a straight line sober, Charlie's old house was pulling the floor right out from under me.

I scooted over to investigate and either do what I could to fix it or alert the proper authorities to get this bitch on the mend. I have a hard enough time making it from Point A to Point B staying vertical, the last thing I need is the world falling apart under my feet while I'm trying.

The corner of the offending board was lifting away from the plane of the floor. I poked my fingernail into the crack and was surprised that the entire piece, about four inches by three feet, came away easily leaving a neat little rectangle in the floor.

I was even more surprised that there was stuff in it.

What do we have here? I felt accomplished and excited and sort of like how I imagine Christopher Columbus felt when he accidentally stumbled across America.

The first item was an unmarked CD in a clear jewel case. I scrambled to the archaic stereo on the bedside table and popped it into the player on top.

Two realizations struck me simultaneously:

This was my mother's lullaby, a piano version of the one she had made up and hummed to me almost every night in my formative years, and

The musician was Edward.

It was hard to say how I knew the second part, but I did. Something about the way he caressed melody and wove in the gentle undercurrents that became harmony. I could practically see his long, accomplished fingers spreading across the span of keys and coaxing magic out of them in a way that made me feel like I had never heard a song before I had heard his rendition. Nobody played like Edward.

I thought about how I had atrociously banged out the tune on the baby grand at the music store with Edward so many months ago. Of course he would remember the gist of it, what with that dastardly perfect vampire recall, and turn my shitty semblance of a song into the masterpiece that I was listening to now.

_What a fucking show-off_, I thought, smiling to myself. He knew how much the lullaby meant to me. It was so beautifully romantic that he went through the trouble to record it and creepishly hide it under the floor after he snuck in like a fucking weirdo in the middle of night. I found myself smiling even harder. We were so unlike every other couple in existence and I loved him more for it.

It's sort of a risky little game when you think about it. I'm assuming he thought that moving the floorboard would trip me up and send me pilfering through the subterranean atmosphere, and then created this little cache of goodies to find. But what if I hadn't fallen? How long would this stuff have stayed undiscovered? And more importantly, what other treats did he have stashed away for me?

I pulled out a flat, white box next. Beneath the lid was a long, thick piece of paper with a ton of fine print on it that I scanned quickly to assess the idea. Travel vouchers. For a trip to Jacksonville. We were going away together? How very un-high school of us. I tried out the dialogue in my head with an unnamed, unimportant classmate: _Hey Emma, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm spending the weekend away with my lover._ It made me feel like a Gossip Girl, in that I was still a teenager but all sorts of ridiculously unlikely and mature things went on in my life. Emma Van Der Woodsen.

I was beaming at this point. I loved that tricky vampire with all this stealthy stuff up his sleeve! I guessed that this was why he had left unceremoniously in the night, because he had a wacky little scavenger hunt for me, complete with a treasure trove of presents. How did I get to be the fortunate son? I had ended up with a serious keeper and I itched to see him and put sloppy dog kisses all over his perfect face.

The song on the CD player moved into a different tune, but one that I was still familiar with. Esme's favorite. I closed my eyes for a minute to let the music have me and took a deep breath, reveling in the paragon that was Edward. I was the luckiest girl alive.

Finally, I reached down for what looked like the last little nugget of joy in the floor. It was a small stack of photographs, the one on top of Edward.

If I could have seen my face, I know it would have been the one I get when I think about long division, Rousseau's philosophy and four-way traffic stops: one of bemused confusion.

Music, I get. Vacation, I get. A narcissistic picture of Edward intended as a gift… not so much. It just wasn't his style. He was beyond beautiful in it, of course. He was looking down with the sort of glaze in his eyes that I have the satisfaction of seeing every once in a while and that magnanimous smile that broke my heart and put me back together all at the same time. I scrutinized the planes of his faultless face in the photo and marveled at my good fortune that this exquisite creature favored me.

It was then that I realized the picture was folded in half.

What waited for me on the other side was beyond any words that I have ever, or will ever have the capacity for.

For a hot second I thought she was me. My age, with my features, looking at a boy with the face I know I've worn almost every day since I met him.

In almost the same instant, though, I knew that she wasn't.

In my hand was a photograph of Edward Cullen and my mother.


	21. Unchained Melody

Bella's POV

My entire body froze. I stopped moving, and I could literally feel myself getting cold.

"Oh Jacob…" I began, trailing off because I didn't know what to say.

"Yeah," he huffed, shaking me from his arm.

"I'm sorry," I whispered meekly, hanging my head and feeling tears leak out of the inner corners of my eyes. I didn't deserve this, and Jake didn't deserve it even more. What was happening to us?

A moment passed where neither of us said anything, and then I heard a soft groan of acquiescence. Jake pressed a kiss into my hair and pulled me into his embrace.

"It's not your fault," he murmured into the top of my head. "I'm overreacting, I know. I just… I never wanted to hear his name again, especially from you."

Was that all I had said? I was afraid to ask, but I needed to know.

"Did I, um… what did I say?" I asked without lifting my chin.

I felt the muscles in his chest tighten under my cheek. "It was like waking up in 20 years ago. His name, mostly. 'Please don't go' other times… and you cried a little," Jake said quietly, pained.

Oh my poor, sweet Jacob. He shouldn't have heard it. My pain was doubled for having to bear his as well, for being the source of such discontent to a man to who was entitled to so very much more. I continued to cry silently into his chest as he held me to him uncomfortably.

"It's not like you could help it. I just… I don't know if I can do this again."

I couldn't find the audacity in me to ask him to try.

Edward's POV

I left Emma at Charlie's house in Bella's bed before dawn, but spent several additional hours running. Not to anything, not from anything, just to have the sanctity of my own head without unwanted intrusions from anyone else. I ran up to the border and through Canada a bit before coming back down and reaching the base of my driveway sometime just before twilight. Slowing to a walk, I climbed the porch steps and swung the front door open.

The house was devoid of thought.

But that didn't mean it was empty.

She sat at my piano bench with her back to me. Her palms were flat on it as well, each hand about six inches from her body and her shoulders hunched forward in a gentle shrug. She looked little older than 17 herself.

"I don't know why I'm here," she said without turning around. She reached out with her right hand and stroked an ivory key, and then another, until I realized what she was doing; fingering the basic melody to my lullaby, her lullaby, slowly and quietly. It sounded melancholy and heartbreaking.

I didn't move, didn't respond.

I hadn't expected to see her again. I hadn't wanted to, really. The last thing I needed was to interact with Bella while my insides roiled with tumult over her. I hated that she was in my head again, haunting me once more, the constant reminder of what I hadn't done right.

Pulling her arm back from the keyboard, she swung the bench around to face me, sadness brimming in her brown eyes. An emotion that made those eyes very much Bella, as it was one I had never seen in Emma's. She looked innocent and hurt, and I could see the girl I had left in the forest. I could see the girl I loved.

Her bottom lip trembled and she bit down on it without looking away from me.

I crossed the room in three strides, put a hand on either side of her face, and pulled her to her feet.

I pressed my mouth to hers before I could think to stop it.

***

It was nothing like falling back into an old habit.

When I had kissed Bella 22 years ago, it was chaste and delicate. The way I was pushing my tongue through her lips was neither.

She brought her hands up and curled them around my biceps as I wrapped one arm around her waist and slid the other beneath her butt and pulled up, hitching her leg up onto my hip as I continued to consume her lips.

She gasped in surprise and dropped her ear to her shoulder, exposing her throat to me as ragged breaths slipped from her mouth. That, too, was no longer the same. An action that would have once sent me reeling was now just a subtle reminder that there were things I wanted more. And that I was about to get them.

I set her back on her feet and dropped my hands to my sides as I took a step back and ran a slow path with my eyes from her shoulders to her toes and back again. The piano bench was against my calves and I lowered myself to a sitting position, my gaze glued to her body.

"Undress," I said quietly.

She hesitated, frozen in place but burning me with her eyes. There was so much hurt in her, so much lonely, brokenhearted anger, but for the same reason I couldn't bring myself to walk away, once more, to something that I knew to be better for me… for her… for us, her hand hovered over her sternum at the top button of her shirtdress, right over her heart.

In slow motion, I watched the girl I had loved for the duration of the only life I'd ever known unfasten the buttons down the front of her dress until it hung open around her slight form. Her eyes never left mine.

"People always do what you tell them to do?" she asked with a sad smirk as she tugged the fabric off of her shoulders and the dress slid down the length of her arms. She pulled it off and held it in her right hand, so tightly her knuckles turned white, and I drank in the sight of her.

The years had been good to Bella. If I hadn't known she was 40, I would have placed her at 32, tops. In diffused light, she could probably pass for late 20s, even, and she had never looked more girlish than she did placed before my piano, emanating playful mischief as she tilted her head downward and flirted from under her eyelashes. She stood before me in a simple, black silk slip trimmed with lace at the deep v-neck and around the bottom and she was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

I pointed to the floor at her feet and she dropped the dress.

"I guess so," she answered herself in a murmur.

I reached out and tentatively brushed the top of her left thigh with the palm of my hand, then slowly curled my fingers around the back of it and mirrored the motion on the other side. Gently, but quickly, I jerked her legs apart and heard her breath hitch as her heartbeat raced at my touch. Dragging a finger in zig-zags up and across her thighs, I hesitated- so briefly that her human sensibilities would never detect it- at the apex between them before sinking it into her.

It was painful to fight down the urge to compare. I found myself wishing my brain could make the assimilation without actually dragging up the memories, but I simply couldn't ignore the contrast. While not antithetic, it was dissimilar to be certain. With Emma as my only real sexual experience, she was all I had known and the default for my expectations. Something so small as putting my finger in her was a vastly difference sensation: Bella, while deliciously warm, wasn't Emma's scorching heat. She smelled different, she felt different, and the confusion of last night's indiscretion with Emma was suddenly obsolete. There would be no misunderstanding about whom I made love to tonight.

I pushed the hem of the slip up around her hips; she wore nothing underneath. Teasing my finger in and out of her, up her slit and running soft circles over her clit and back down again, she whimpered and looked down at me with heavy lidded eyes. I slid the piano bench a few inches closer and brought my mouth to meet her body at the most important part.

Long, languid strokes from the bottom of her to the cleft at the top were met with heavy gasping and increasingly more frequent moans from Bella. Lashing my tongue across her clit in repetitious criss-crosses, then pulling it delicately between my lips and sucking, her head lolled back against her shoulders and she whispered my name. Her grip on the top of the piano was so tight, it looked as though the bones would poke right through the knuckles; I could tell that she was on the cusp of orgasm and I hadn't waited all these years to let our first sexual encounter end so quickly and unceremoniously. I pulled my head away and blew gentle concentric circles that began around her clitoris and gradually edged out to encompass the entire V in the cradle of her hips and then bringing it back in again.

Her legs began to shake and one knee buckled beneath her, but I tightened my grasp around the soft flesh of her sides to keep her standing.

"Edward, _please_," she murmured, eyes closed dreamily.

I smiled into her skin and hiked the slip up further, around her waist, flicked my tongue into her bellybutton and then pressed a kiss into it.

"Oh God," she whispered hoarsely, "Edward, I… I need you." Words I'd waited to hear her speak since the moment I saw her again after all those years. No trace of hate or disgust, just the passion I'd known only once before and didn't realize how desperately I'd needed to know again.

I looked up at her again, to watch the bliss play out on her face and revel in the fact that I'd done it to her, and when I brought my focus back down to her lower half, my breath caught in my throat and I was momentarily stunned.

Stretched low across her abdomen, about five inches long, was a scar of undeniable origin.

I had made the conscious decision to not think about Emma this evening, but despite my best efforts, the evidence of her existence was staring at me accusatorily from beneath Bella's silk slip.

My eyes stayed glued to the raised line of flesh along her belly, dumbfounded for both thought and speech. Bella shifted uncomfortably and neither of us spoke as we tried unsuccessfully to ignore the figurative pink elephant in the room.

Long seconds passed in silence. She sighed heavily and threaded her fingers into my hair and I rested my forehead against her stomach with my eyebrows knit together under the burden of my thoughts.

I realized then that I had a very short window of time to react before this moment would be lost forever, and for the very first time in my arduously eternal existence, I decided that life was too short to miss it.

I laid a line of kisses along the scar, slowly and strategically, paying homage to what it signified, and then pulled the slip down to cover it. The fabric would conceal the scar for the remainder of the night.

I stood at vampire speed, bringing myself face to face with Bella.

With my arms under her knees and around her back, I scooped her into a bridal carry and set her on the closed lid of my baby grand. Her feet landed awkwardly on the keyboard on either side of me, making sloppy, discordant music.

I pulled her knees further apart which deepened the tones she made with her right foot as the ones from the left went higher. Situated between her legs, I yanked her forward from the hips until she was flush against the aching rod my cock had become. She playfully fingered the button at the top of my pants.

I was in no mood for games.

I flicked the button open and let the pants pool around my ankles as I eased my erection out of the flap at the front of my Calvins.

Laying my hand flat against her collarbone, I pushed lightly to lay her down across the top of the piano and she resisted. I tried once more with the same result. I could _make_ her do as I wished, certainly, and for a second I thought about it, but her human fragility once more made its way to the forefront of my mind.

If I was granite, she was glass, and I simply had to treat her as such.

She reached up and twisted my lapels into her fists, drawing herself up to my mouth and bringing the tip of my now-bare cock to a very precarious position at her entrance. I kissed her and leaned forward, which accomplished the original goal of laying her down as well as seated her lips right around my head.

I stood up, ran my hand up from her stomach, between her breasts and back where I had first pressed it to her clavicle and held her in place as I pushed into her.

From there, I let biology have us.

Her eyes were closed and the brows furrowed tightly together as I made love to her sprawled across my piano. She whimpered quietly as I slid myself into her repeatedly.

Something was off, though I couldn't say just what it was, and I forced it out of my head as I concentrated on the dream come true that was unfolding in front of me.

And then the universe shifted.

For the second time in as many days, if I'd have heard the thoughts of the person approaching me, it would have changed the course of history.

As it was, the front door swung open to reveal Bella and I in flagrante delicto.

There was an unmistakable bark of sardonic laughter as I turned my head away from Bella to meet Emma's eyes, full of disbelief and dramatic irony.

Bella gasped audibly and her right foot shifted into an uncomfortable and foreboding B minor as something slipped from Emma's hands, floating silently to the ground. I would have recognized it from any distance; the photograph of Bella and me, from under the floor at Charlie's house.

Things could have gone one thousand ways from there. Instinctually, I threw myself in front of Bella to protect her from any potential mauling if Emma went the way of the werewolf.

Emma, of course, shocked me beyond measure, as was her way. She maintained her humanity, a cold look of betrayal ghosting across her face, and spoke quietly, dryly.

"Well coo-coo-ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson."

And she was gone.


	22. Humanity

Emma's POV

Well I'd be God damned if this wasn't fifty shades of fucked up.

I knew that if I stayed in this body I'd only have seconds before he caught me, but I pounded my two feet into the dirt as hard as I could manage as I ran for the woods.

A shiver shot down my back and I felt my entire frame start to vibrate. I took a deep breath and held it in until the shaking passed. I would not allow him to make an animal out of me.

Again.

True to form, I heard him disturbing the air a few paces behind me. I did not stop.

My poor human legs pushed harder, their reflex reaction to carry me away from the nightmare, and I ran so fast that the wind dried the tears in my eyes before they could travel down my cheeks. I would not turn around.

And then, in a painfully familiar and ironic strike of fate, the toe of my shoe caught behind a gnarled root that had freed itself from the earth and I was sent falling, in seeming slow motion, to the floor of the forest.

Until a pair of pale hands shot out beneath me and righted my balance.

I found myself face to face with the monster who murdered love.

His eyes were wide with disbelief and something else that it took me a moment to place, something I'd never seen him express before: pure, unfiltered fear.

"Don't touch me," I snarled in a voice that I could barely recognize as my own. His hands fell away from my shoulders and he stared at me frightened, unable to speak.

"You're disgusting," I growled. Flames of anger started at the soles of my feet and licked up my legs until I felt like I was burning from the bottom up. My vision tinged crimson around the peripheral and the world got fuzzy for a second before I shook it off. It was my Mission: Impossible to stay human until I literally combusted.

I wanted to take it like a man. It made me think of when Brad Pitt was searing Edward Norton's hand with lye in _Fight Club _and then he finally poured vinegar over it to neutralize the burn. I wanted so desperately to be unburdened that way. The idea of becoming a wolf held a kind of serenity and relief that I should be racing to, but it was a false comfort; all my problems would be waiting here when I got back.

I briefly considered the benefits of my wolf body and how I would be able to tear him to pieces if I took that route and my broken heart smiled a little. I would have liked very much to break off his trifling vampire dick and hide it somewhere on the Quileute reservation where he could never look for it.

You know, the trifling vampire dick that he had inside my mother mere moments ago.

I quivered with rage for a second and had to close my eyes, as looking at him infuriated me beyond comparison and would send me spiraling into a gnashing mess of claws and teeth that ached to dismember him.

He thought that this was a good opportunity to try and speak to me.

"Emma, I… I'm… sorry," he said, strangled, with the last word offered in a shamed whisper, like he knew he should hate himself for even thinking that would ever be enough.

"Oh, well as long as you're SORRY!" I laughed maniacally and threw my hands up in the air.

I kept waiting to cry but it didn't happen. The overwhelming emotion that coursed through me was still only anger. It swelled up and expanded in my chest and lit a fuse at the end of each of my fingertips. My own self respect was the only pin in the grenade.

"What are you sorry for?" I asked softly.

He didn't answer.

"For cheating on me? For fornicating with my mother on top of your piano? For the _innumerable_ lies you've spit at me since the moment we met? Or maybe for building our entire relationship on a foundation of deceit and fucked-up, misplaced affection?"

"Emma I-"

"I know, you're _sorry_," I patronized sarcastically. "You're also the most selfish and heartless being to ever inhabit the earth. I don't know that I could believe you were ever human, Edward. Centuries ago, you may have been born a living, breathing person, but you were never truly compassionate or reverent. You are nothing more than a pig. A vile, filthy pig that would have contributed so much more to society by sacrificing itself in the name of bacon than wasting everyone's time with the pretense of humanity. I could vomit just thinking about how I ever let you put your hands on me."

It was true. I could feel bile like acid churning at the bottom of my esophagus. I choked it back down. Throwing up on his feet would accomplish very little, though it didn't change the sickness that put me in a headlock and set me dizzy and reeling around the thicket of the woods.

"I wasn't expecting you," he said lamely.

Well if that's not the understatement of the fucking century.

"Well gee, Edward, sorry to catch you with your pants down. Be sure to let me know next time you're getting balls deep in my mom and I'll try to remember to call before I swing by."

He winced.

Yes, clearly he was the one who was hurt by all this.

"Does this make you uncomfortable? Would you rather be talking about anything other than the fact that you are a slippery, despicable mother fucker?" Even I had to laugh a little at that. He was really and truly a mother fucker in its most basic and literal incarnation.

"It's not as simple as that."

"I should certainly hope not! I'd have a hard time believing that you thought she was me. Or that Bella showed up in a welcome wagon while you were practicing and you pitched a fucking tent playing a Bach cantata and fell into her vagina by accident. It better be real fucking complicated, Edward."

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger and said nothing.

"Hey douche bag, I'M WAITING!" I shouted at him. I felt my temper back-building. Obviously there was no excuse for the debauched dirtiness that I had walked in on but there sure as shit better be a fucking explanation. Every second that he remained silent inched me closer to the point where I no longer cared what he had to say and instead I just made him my dinner.

Vampire: the other, OTHER white meat.

I felt each vertebrae individually chattering in my spine as I thought about it… instinctually, there was nothing more that I had ever wanted in my life than to maul him beyond recognition and set him on fire with the embers of my own ferocity and vehemence.

He began quietly: "I knew her-"

"Yes, in the Biblical sense, it seems," I interrupted venomously.

"Twenty-two years ago, I was living with my family in Forks," he continued as if I hadn't spoken, his eyes cast to the ground and his stony body unmoving. "She came to live with Charlie when she was 17, so that Renee could travel with Phil and not worry about her."

That's when I started gagging. The people he was talking about were the key characters in the story of my life, and he knew them before I was even born. He spoke of them with such familiarity, he knew their names and their life stories, and he made it seem as though I, as a person, was strictly an afterthought. I swallowed and pressed my lips into a hard line as he continued.

"We… dated." He struggled to find the word, and then settled on that one. "We were together a very short time, and then I left. My family left. We moved away from Forks to protect her, because she was fragile and human and not meant for our world. I left to save her."

So what, did he want a fucking medal or something?

I had a mini-Cold War playing out in my body at that point. Half of me still wanted to claw the non-life out of him and hear him shriek and cry and suffer, but the other half wanted to get as far away from him as physically/humanly/supernaturally possible. I settled for taking a step backwards and actively trying to burn him with my eyes.

"Cut to the part where you start fucking her on furniture in your parents' house. Real original, by the way," I scathed.

"It isn't exactly a straight line from one to the other, Emma," he said sadly.

"I know, somewhere in between you met me, lied through your beautiful teeth about everything in creation, fucked _me_ as well, and ruined my life, tomato, to-mah-toe."

"I loved her, Emma."

There it was.

In less time than it took him to say the words, I was bent over vomiting in the space between us. I had never been sicker in my life.

At vampire speed, he was at my side and laid a cold hand gently on my back, between my shoulder blades, which only made it worse. I turned my head to the side and heaved the contents of my stomach onto his leather Prada loafers. Well would you look at that. Puking on him _did_ make me feel a little better.

As soon as I was through, I snapped back into a standing position and punched him in his gorgeous fucking face.

God _damn _did that hurt!

And only because I was able to catch him off guard did it have any effect. I knew I couldn't _injure_ him. But I laid a fist squarely in the perfect plane of his cheekbone and sent him reeling back several feet. Win.

"Did I tell you to get your repulsive fucking dead-ass hands off of me? This is my dance space, that is your dance space. If you come within striking range again I will emancipate your head from your fucking shoulders and punt it into the Puget Sound."

His shock was evident as he brought a hand to his cheek, though I can't imagine why. What the fuck did he expect from me? He was lucky he still had man bits. For now, anyway.

"Well finish your fucking story, Casanova, you loved my mom-" I felt the chunks coming up my throat again but I swallowed and they subsided a little, "a hundred years ago… you left to 'save' her, but not before you stashed a fucking smoking gun under the floorboards at Charlie's house… yeah, I found it all, you fucking skeez. Then some other shit clearly transpired and I would like to know how that equates to the bare-assed display I saw in the parlor that makes me want to poke out my mind's eye."

He looked like he was deep in thought but I think he was just trying to buy time.

"When I saw you in chemistry that first day- well, smelled you, really- I knew without a doubt who you were. In that moment, you were _her_, Emma, in more ways than I knew how to name. The scent of you was ambrosial and I fell half in love with you on the spot. And then you spoke, and it became painfully clear to me that you weren't, and that I could never make you be. Nobody makes you do anything, Emma." The corner of his cheek lifted into a melancholy half smile.

Was that supposed to be a compliment? That he finds me insubordinate and pigheaded? This was nowhere near the apology I expected.

"I was enamored with the idea of you," he admitted. "I wanted- needed- to know you, to know _her_. I became obsessed with you, Emma, you pervaded every thought I had.

"And then somewhere along the way… I guess it was between the moment I heard your mind and the very first time I laid my lips on yours… it became less about her and more about you."

It was then that, for the first time, I let myself consider my mother in this predicament. I had been so distracted with Edward's hand in it that I hadn't really thought about her as anything more than the other woman until then.

My poor mother.

For the entirety of my life, she has been a fragile, delicate person. I can't count the number of times Jake and I evasively danced around eggshells to protect her; it was an unspoken understanding between us that Bella was breakable and we weren't to shatter her.

I had assumed that she had always been this way. That her emotional instability was what my father found endearing, igniting the protector in him and creating the unbalanced but somehow workable dichotomy between them.

Never did I toy with the notion that someone had broken her.

And now, in the realization of the deepest seeded insecurities and fears and nightmares that I never even thought to have, I understood that Edward Cullen was the one who had done it.

My heart ached for her more than it even did for myself. She couldn't handle something like this, not from anyone and especially not from him. While I wanted to pity myself and wallow in my own misfortune and unreasonable sorrow, I felt even worse for her. I would get banged up, hurt and damaged but I'd rub some dirt on it and walk it off eventually. Bella couldn't manage what was going to happen from here: she was yielding and malleable from the inside out; I was soft skin, hard core. And as much as I hated her in the moment for lying to me all this time and for, you know, fucking my boyfriend, in a gesture of infinite wisdom so far beyond my intellect and maturity level, I was able to understand her, and couldn't find it in me to fault her for the weaknesses that someone else had put there.

But it still didn't change how I was falling apart inside presently.

I had the kind of pressing ache in the depths of my stomach that made it feel like my insides were trying to get out, but through some painful road not taken like my belly button, not the much-traversed upchuck factory of my mouth. I had already let out about as much as I was comfortable with and I pushed my hands into my abdomen to hold the holes together. If I let go, there was a very real possible that I would dissolve into irreparable nothingness on the forest floor.

"I loved you. Somewhere deep within me, I had always loved you and it was stupid to ever try to fight it. It was real, Emma, you and I were real. I didn't fake a minute of the time I spent with you."

He offered nothing else.

"And then?" I whispered through my encompassing and mind numbing pain.

"And then I saw her," he said, nearly inaudibly, with his eyes on my hands which were still kneading the pain out of my belly.

For a brief moment I wanted to die. I wanted to permanently get away from all the despair that was piling up waist-high from my feet. For the duration of about four blinks, I contemplated how easy it would be to end all of this inhuman pain that scorched through every cell in my body.

And then I remembered who the fuck I was and I got over it.

I'll get fucked in the ass six ways from Sunday by an obese circus gorilla with a little hat and matching vest before I let anyone make me feel that way.

Anger rose back up in me once more and breathed life back into me. Anger that was doubled for bearing my mother's pain as well. I was sick and disgusted and miserable and betrayed… but more than anything I was pissed the fuck off.

"Everything about you, about us, has been a lie, and you are dumber than I would have ever fathomed if you think differently, Edward. You've been faking since the moment you spoke to me, when you were well aware of my dubious origins," I shot out hatefully.

"That's not how it _is_, Emma, I've been trying to tell you!" he cried.

"I don't care how you slice it, Edward! There is nothing ok with what has gone on between us, and I hate you for having entrapped me in something as debased and fucked up as this."

"Emma, I love-"

"That you can even _say_ the word love is an indictment against the emotion as a whole. You are incapable of love, Edward Cullen. It's laughable that anyone could ever think otherwise. You are a soulless monster and I delight in the fact that when you do finally get around to dying, you will suffer an eternity at the hands of Lucifer, the only demon as comparably evil as yourself. I hope you burn forever, Edward, and I hope it hurts. I want you tortured and writhing in pain for innumerable centuries that outlast your miserable stay on earth by eons. I hope you feel and sear and ache and that each second passes like an hour. Then perhaps you will understand one iota of the damage you have done to me.

"I want you to know what it's like when you give everything you have to someone and they piss all over it right in front of you. I want for once, for you to stop over-thinking every fucking thing you say and do and just feel. And when you do, I want you to suffer."

"You don't think I'm _suffering_?" He roared incredulously. "Trapped in limbo, in love with two generations of women who I never deserved either of? I am _tortured_, Emma! I am miserable! And no matter where I search in the bottomless recesses in my mind, I can't see a happily ever after for any of us!

"I'm sorry you saw what you did, I wish it never happened. I got caught up and allowed an unacceptable indiscretion. No matter what she has meant to me, being unfaithful to you is inexcusable and I know it. I don't expect you to forget it or let me do the same. I also don't expect sympathy from you for what I am battling with. I won't ask you to relate or feel sorry for me, because I know that your own pain, to you, is exponentially more unspeakable than my own.

"But if you ever again doubt that I loved you- _love_ you- you are out of your mind, bat shit crazy. This is a mess, and I know it. I will never be able to express how sorry I am for tangling you into this web of horrific deceit and anguish. But what has happened, and whatever will happen, will not change a lick of what you are to me. She was _first_, chronologically, but in so many other ways, you were first as well. I love her. And I love you. And while I would never have the audacity to ask for your compassion, to facilitate your understanding, I think the summation of my state of affairs is most succinctly described as, 'everything would be monumentally easier if the two warring halves of me could separate and each be with the girl they love.'"

I took a breath and waited a beat before I answered.

"If you want to be torn if half I'm sure I could arrange it," I said quietly, looking up to meet his eyes.

He gave a humorless laugh. "I don't doubt it, love." He hesitantly took a step towards me, and I reciprocated with one towards him.

Pain was backlit in his eyes. There was no doubt that he was indeed suffering.

Slowly, he reached forward and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, giving a sad smile, and letting his hand linger on my cheek.

With his eyebrows knit together in tumultuous agony, the pain was evident on his hard face. He closed his eyes and whispered through unmoving lips, "I love you, Emma."

I splayed my hands flat on his shoulders and pressed my breasts into his chest as I dragged my lips across his cheek and put my mouth to his ear.

"Edward?" I whispered.

"Mm?" he acknowledged, one hand now at the base of my neck while the other trailed fingers across the small of my back.

"_I said don't fucking touch me_," I hissed, bringing my knee up into his groin and pushing him hard from the shoulders.

He crumpled up, doubled over in pain, and fell to his knees. Good. He should get used to it down there.

I guess even when you're immortal and made of marble, getting kicked in the junk will always be a money shot.

I backed up in short, dainty steps before turning around to walk away from his shitty, debilitated, useless, loser, cheating vampire self.

"Oh, and don't follow me, either," I threw over my shoulder as I broke into a jog to run headfirst into the darkness of a new-fallen night.

Unmanageable, animalistic rage be damned. I was in complete control.

I had never felt more human in my life.

I messaged SnowQueensIceDragon months ago and got permission to use "fifty shades of fucked up" and it is a MoTU homage, not a criminal act, so don't get your panties in a twist!


	23. You Can't Go Home Again

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Bella's POV

He was there, and then he was gone.

Edward Cullen, running away from me once more.

I had never been so happy to see him go.

I sighed deeply and looked around the room. Darkness had fallen and the only light was cast from floor lamps in various spots around the parlor. With the soft glow and dark wood furniture, it would have been very romantic looking... if I hadn't known what had just transpired here.

I slid off the top of the piano, accidentally plunking keys with random body parts as I found my footing. Job one was to reconfigure myself and try to get my act together physically. I'd save sifting through the trauma for job two.

Bending over, I picked up my rumpled dress from the floor and shook it out, then slid my arms into the sleeves and buttoned it down, smoothing as I went. It was in vain of course; linen wrinkles horrendously, there was no denying this walk of shame.

I sighed again.

"So... _this_ happened." I heard Alice from behind me, a sad amusement in her voice. I spun around and found her leaning against the frame of the door that Edward had left ajar in his haste.

I sat down on the piano bench and worked my hands through the tangles in my hair. "How does it end?" I asked quietly.

"Couldn't tell you."

"Because it goes against your ethics?"

"Because I can't see her."

Oh.

"That's how I knew she got involved in your little... debacle. When it disappeared," Alice explained.

I looked at the floor shamefully. Alice had seen the whole thing.

I was disgusted by what I had done.

I really didn't know why I'd come there. I was just feeling so empty, so haunted, and I guess I was trying to put some closure on the past 24 hours which were, beyond any comparison, the most horrific in my life. I just left, I _had_ to leave, driving on autopilot away from my angry mountain of a husband, and when I brought myself back to conscious thought, I was parked in their driveway.

The door was unlocked and nobody was home. I let myself in and sat at his piano, drowning in everything that had gone wrong.

And then he was there.

I didn't have to hear or see him to know it, I just felt his presence like I had so many times before.

And when he kissed me I realized why I'd found myself at his feet again.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a selfless and giving person. It's one of the cornerstones of my character, the whole reason I moved to Forks in the first place: putting other people before me.

What I did in the moments that followed was the first selfish act that I'd ever allowed myself. The first time I decided that what _I _wanted, what _I_ needed, was more important than being subservient to everyone else. I wasn't doing it as someone's daughter or wife or mother, it was just _me_, accountable to nobody but myself. For once, I didn't overanalyze or wonder what this would mean or how it would affect the people, places and things in my life. I simply let it happen.

The feel of his cold hands on me still sent my heart racing erratically and with my eyes closed tight enough, I could almost pretend that the past 22 years had never happened. It was Edward and I, he had never left me, and it was like the alternate universe that my life had become was set once again back where it belonged.

But I wasn't a little girl anymore, and he wasn't treating me as such. There was passion in him now, fire emanating from within through his icy exterior. It was consuming and debilitating and I felt the hole mending itself each moment that his body was pressed against mine.

I turned off logic, reason and thought and gave the reins to my wanton body, which thrilled at his touch. My skin tingled everywhere his fingers had been and when he told me to undress... he was bossy and domineering and nothing like the boy he so resembled.

His hands were rough and demanding, but I was more than willing to give what they asked of me. Moment by moment, the years were melting away and transporting me back to the place I missed most in the world. I began to forget everything that I lost in Edward's wake so long ago.

Those hands... so skilled at everything he had ever done, from manipulating the keys of the beautiful piano I was leaning up against to the way they slid under my slip and froze the whole world in place so that the only things that existed were Edward and I and the mind numbing pleasure he coaxed from me with every stroke of his forefinger. I closed my eyes and turned off thought, allowing myself the luxury of simply feeling.

Soundlessly, he slid the bench closer to me. I sensed him again, his face mere inches away from the most private part of me. And then his mouth was there, and I couldn't fight off the heavy moans that bled from my lips. He lavished his skills and attention on my sex until my knees began to shake and I would have collapsed on top of him if he hadn't held me in his steel grip while I begged him for more. I wanted him to push me over the edge more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. It felt like the culmination of my entire lost childhood, something with the capacity to fill the empty void the past 22 years had been and I was so close.

"Edward, _please_." A throaty whisper I didn't recognize as my own.

And then it stopped.

Was he going to ruin my life once more? Because this was a hell of a way to do it.

I felt his tongue in my bellybutton, followed by a soft kiss there.

"Oh God... Edward, I... I need you," I had choked out. How many times had I said the very same thing in my sleep? So many more than I could count, probably more than I even knew of.

And for a moment he stopped touching me. With my eyes shut I was so attuned to his tactile ministrations that I could sense his hesitation. I felt my slip bunched around my waist and I knew he had seen my C-section scar.

I put my hands into his hair and prayed for the brilliant ignorance to keep reality from crashing down around me for just a few more minutes. _Just this once_, I bargained with no deity in particular, _let me have this one moment_.

My anticipation began to wane as he pressed his forehead into my belly dejectedly. I could feel the shield around us, the one that gave us immunity to the outside world, start to stretch and fade and just when I was about to push him away from me and run into the abyss that waited to swallow me up, he gently kissed the scar and pulled my slip over it.

Before I could register it, we were face-to-face once more and he sat me atop his piano, unsheathed his erection and tried to lay me down.

But there was no way I wasn't going to gawk a little first.

I'd seen very few penises in my life. Jake's, of course, and two others belonging to requisite drunken rendezvous frat boys in college, but they were all somehow different than this one.

The fact that I'd assumed Edward's would be any less than the most perfect structural creation to ever exist showed just how long it had been since I'd been exposed to vampire infallibility. It was just so... smooth. I ached desperately to know how it would feel in me and I fisted my hands in his lapels and drew him to my mouth, pulling his body to mine and feeling the tip of said-perfect cock hedge against the slickness between my legs.

He pushed into me and I waited for the world to fall apart.

But everything stayed exactly as it had been.

There are some things, it would seem, that Edward was not inherently born with adept skill in. Up to that point I hadn't been privy to any of them, because everything he had ever touched had turned to gold. He was the fastest, the smartest, the handsomest... the most everything in the world.

But he fucked like a 17 year old boy.

Like I said, it's not like I was some sort of expert. My experience, strictly in numerical terms, wasn't very impressive at all. But I had been with Jacob long enough to know what felt right. It might have taken us a while to find our way, but we learned from each other and managed to have some pretty excellent sex. And when you've been married as long as we have, things can start to get boring and you have to come up with new stuff to keep yourself awake during the act. We weren't maniacally BDSM or creepy fetishists, but we'd done our share of experimenting and adapting and it equated to good chemistry. Up until this point, what my husband had done to please me had been dramatically underappreciated. It wasn't until now that I recognized the benefits of experience and familiarity.

Realizing the can of worms I'd just cracked open with that thought, I was grasping at anything that would push Jacob from my thoughts, to keep me from asphyxiating in my infidelity. It wasn't fair to anyone for me bring the sordid smear of what I was doing onto Jacob's image. I looked up at Edward, laboring over my body with a look of power and concentration on his impossibly beautiful face.

But I had to shut my eyes tightly once again against the feel of him bobbing and weaving at the apex of my thighs. A few defeatist whimpers escaped. It was worse when I couldn't see him. When I wasn't looking at him, knowing exactly who he was and what he had been to me. With my eyes closed, he could have been any incompetent child. But he wasn't, of course. He was the incompetent child that had destroyed my soul in attempt to save it. The incompetent child my daughter was in love with.

And the reality that I had been holding at arm's length, the one I was grazing with my fingertips at every coherent thought I had, imploded over me, crashing against my temporal lobe and sending my guilty conscience running into the nearby woods with her tail between her legs.

I bit my bottom lip hard to keep from crying.

He was a vampire.

She was a werewolf.

And I was a monster.

I wanted to tell him to stop. I wanted him out of me, off of me, and away from me in a way that I would have never dreamed possible. I was nauseous and head sick and the room was starting to tilt, but before I could coax the words out, I heard her. A dry, disbelieving laugh that I'd received before when I'd said things in the past like "Let's get your father a nice tie for his birthday."

For a brief moment, he stood in front of me like a shield, unabashedly naked and concerned for my safety, protecting me against mauling from my only child, who instead chose to speak.

Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, indeed.

And then he was gone, pants up from around his ankles and chasing after her.

"You ok?" Alice asked gently, pulling me from my mental instant-replay.

"Not even a little bit."

"Stupid question, I guess."

Uncomfortable silence fell between us. My stomach roiled unhappily, sick to death with the past hour and I trained my eyes on the floor so I could concentrate on not throwing up. I wondered idly what I'd just done to my family... to Emma, to Jake... the most important people in my life. I had compromised the only meaningful entities in my world for a nanosecond of bad sex with my high school boyfriend.

I was an adult, and I knew better.

Or at least I should have.

But I'd behaved like a selfish child and inadvertently ruined my daughter's life... not to mention violated the sanctity of my marriage. It wasn't worth the cost that I would be paying for the rest of eternity.

I felt obscenely guilty and I hated Edward a little bit but I think it was mostly overflow from my own self-loathing; it was rising up in my throat so high that I almost choked on it. I became a little girl lost once more when I'd seen him again, and it had sent me into such a violent tailspin that I crashed all over everything that mattered to me, ruining it beyond repair.

The shame was a stain on my conscience. I could feel the blood dripping from my hands. And like Lady Macbeth before me, I was liable to be driven mad by the damned spot that would never get clean.

It made me even sicker that getting what I had wanted for as long as I could remember was the only way I'd ever have figured it out. Having Edward illustrate the years that have passed, the way I grew up but he never truly did, the vast and mighty differences that divided us now; dissimilarities that went so far beyond our species. This was not what I'd been hanging on to. Disappointment welled up from the center of me and spread its way through my veins until it reached each extremity. I'd wasted so much time, energy and tears pondering the what-ifs and the if-onlys to be let down in such an anticlimactic culmination.

I revisited how I'd categorized our pairing when I was a girl. Unbalanced. He was perfect, and I was plain and the scales tipped so far in his favor that I couldn't measure up with lead weights in my pockets. Still now, we weren't equals, but the qualifications were a little different. He'd lived, for lack of a better word, for hundreds of years, but I had had a life. I'd become a woman after he'd left, and he was a child frozen in time for eternity. Each of us took our turn in being rejected from the other's world.

Now, saddled with contempt and contrition over destroying the livelihood that I didn't appreciate nearly enough until I'd compromised it moments ago, I sat and waited for the resolution that might never arrive.

I heard tires in the driveway and seconds later, Esme's delicate humming. Her favorite song, one of Edward's compositions. She stopped mid-step when she saw me on the piano bench.

"Bella, I... we... I didn't think we'd see you again. Not that I'm not pleased but..." She shot a questioning look at Alice, who put her palms up like _I'm not touching that_. "If you don't mind me asking, does your being here relate to the lashing that Edward is getting in the forest right now?"

I looked up at her in surprise and she tapped an earlobe. "She's verbally bludgeoning him. Worse than anything I've ever heard, in fact. I'm trying to ignore it, for their privacy, but goodness, they are loud!"

I heard nothing but birds chirping melodically.

"I'm sorry dear, it's none of my business. I didn't mean to pry." She walked past and patted me once on the shoulder as she made her way to the staircase.

Dear?

Once so very like a mother to me, Esme was now biologically little less than half my age. I had eclipsed her and it jarred me. I had outgrown the Cullens in every way.

I wished more than anything that I could scoop up the immediate past and dump it anywhere but here. I was an adulteress and a bad mother, and for what? Thirty seconds of misplaced passion that arrived 20 years too late.

It reminded me of the dinky circus they used to put up a block away from our house in Phoenix every July. When I was a kid, it was magical. It was the highlight of every summer and I'd impatiently wait while the sweaty workers erected tents, chomping at the bit to see the stunning stuntwoman on horseback, the daring aerialists and the tricks of the brilliantly trained elephant.

I took Emma there one summer when we were visiting Renee. Just like I had as a child, she fell in love with the smoke and mirrors of twinkling lights and carnival smells, the glamour that emanated from the big top. But while she scarfed cotton candy and roasted peanuts with stars in her eyes, I made shrewd observations about the stuntwoman's stretch marks and the missing sequins on her costume. I spotted guide wires suspending the aerialists and noted innumerable scars on the backside of the "trained" elephant that was clearly beaten within inches of his life when he didn't perform. As an adult, it had lost its enchantment.

Edward Cullen's magic was gone. I was trying to recapture something I had lost decades ago and it simply wasn't the there.

You really can't go home again.

Who was it that wrote that?

Oh right.

Wolfe.

**Chapter End Notes:**

**I'm not going to beg for reviews here because I begged for money at the top of the page. A girl's self respect can only take so many hits per diem.**


	24. Ten Things I Hate About You

Emma's POV

I slowed down when I realized that I didn't really have anywhere to go. I couldn't go home; what if Jake was there? _"Hey, how was your day, Emma?" "It sucked, I saw your wife fucking my boyfriend." _No thanks.

My car was at the house, though, and my feet were starting to hurt. I guessed I could skulk around in the bushes a little and pick it up without being caught. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wasn't the only sneaky son of a bitch in Seattle.

The Harry Potter reference made me smile a little. J.K. Rowling could write the shit out of my story.

I walked the mile home and was relieved to see the house was empty when I got there. Deciding to take advantage of my blissful alone time, I hopped in the shower and got dressed in clean clothes that didn't reek of betrayal, disgust and hatred. Mostly they smelled like Tide.

When I was out of distractions, I went outside and climbed into the driver's seat of the Mustang.

But like… where to? I decided that anything was better than soaking in my own despair alone at home and backed out the driveway to the highway, figuring I'd just wing it. As I idled at a red light on Main, I saw a red car pull up in my peripheral vision.

It was gorgeous, of course, even if it was German and not exactly my style. Sporty, but elegant, painted candy-apple with a mirror shine that bounced moonlight off of it in a way that toed the line to wildly ostentatious. Ah, the BMW M3 convertible. I continued to eye-fuck the fenders for about 30 seconds before I looked at the driver.

Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me.

She sneered and revved her engine. I tipped my head back and laughed. Easy on the cliché, two lane blacktop, this is not a bad 70s movie. I heard her motor again and the car inched forward slightly.

If Rosalie wanted to measure dicks, I'd slap her in the face with mine. Game on, greased lightning. I threw my car into neutral and tapped the accelerator with my foot.

Ok, so I stomped on it, fuck you.

The engine roared the way only a whip made in the 1960s by the high performance hand of Carroll Shelby can and it was more beautiful to my ears than any music that douche nozzle ever made on his piano. I tightened my fingers around the slim steering wheel, anxiously watching the traffic light for the other direction shift to yellow.

Another grumble from bloodsucker Barbie's bitchmobile. I think it was meant to intimidate me but I was mostly still awestruck and comically enamored with the idea that we were actually racing in the streets like some fast and furious toolbags. Too bad this whore was unaware of how the Shelby threw down and that I was about to pillage her village with my American muscle.

I pushed in the brake and put the clutch to the floor, revving the engine so hard the RPMs nearly shot off the tetrameter and then pulled off the clutch while I gassed a little more. The back wheels screeched in protest and breathed out a cloud of acrid smelling smoke that nearly soaked my panties. I could feel an irrepressible smile spreading across my face; Rosalie glared at me through the smoggy vapor.

When the opposing light clicked to red I got back down to business, popping my brake out and shifting into first as I revved the engine once more with my eyes glued to the only illumination that presently mattered to me. I got the green light and shot off the line, taking off so fast that my front tires left the pavement as I transferred a track of rubber onto the street from my back ones.

It no longer mattered to me where she was; I was unaware of everything but my own horsepower as I motioned through the gears, getting faster with each flick of my wrist and riding the high of 400 supercharged ponies beneath me as the speedometer crept up past 100. I felt incredible to be rocketing this fast down the highway in a car that I'd basically forged from a rotting shell of an automobile. The control was unbelievable. With so many things spiraling out of my grasp it was extraordinary to hold the reins on something so powerful. It almost made no difference if she beat me in the race.

But it also didn't hurt that she was blowing my tailpipe like a three cent hooker.

I checked her in my rear view, visibly fuming that despite her best efforts, she couldn't coax her foreign hunk of shit to get on my mean machine.

This went on for a few miles before I flicked on my turn signal and pulled into a 7-11 parking lot.

I wanted to pop the hood and hump all 289 cubic inches of my engine. But I figured it was pretty hot right now, so I settled for stroking the dashboard passionately.

Rosalie pulled in shortly behind me, parking several spaces away, and I stepped out of the car.

Grudgingly, she did the same and walked over to me. "GT350?" she grunted angrily with a knitted brow, like she hated herself for asking.

"Yep," I said succinctly, trying to tame the smug bitch that want to _neener, neener, neener _at her.

"Sounds pretty fierce." She said it like an accusation.

"I put in headers and a new exhaust manifold."

One of the caveman eyebrows quirked up. "Yourself?"

"Yep."

I think she had a mini-orgasm because her eyes rolled back in her head a little and I swear one knee buckled for a split second before she caught herself. She walked a circle around the car and poked her head in the driver's side window, eying my gauges and antique radio. "You didn't update anything?"

I sighed and popped the glove box open, where I had harnessed the CD player, iPod dock and GPS system. "I didn't want to compromise the integrity of the dash. This is a classic."

I saw her drool a little.

The corner of her mouth lifted into an almost-familiar smile and she turned to me. "You're an ok girl, Emma. For a dog, I mean."

"And you're an ok person. For a subhuman cunt."

The smirk broke into a genuine grin that lit up her perfect face. For a second I forgot everything in the world except for how stunningly beautiful she was; it almost hurt to look at her. And then I laughed a little on the inside, because I realized that Rosalie just dazzled me.

"I didn't know you were a mechanic. You should come by my place sometime. I'd love to tune-up with you… I think we could learn a thing or two from one another."

Like how to mangle the other species beyond recognition? I think she read my skepticism because the next thing she said was, "I don't hate you. I just… have to protect them. They're all I have. You know?"

More than she would ever realize.

"Yeah. Thanks, Rosalie."

She smiled once more. "Take it easy, Emma," she swatted me lightly on the ass as she walked back to the Beemer.

The unfortunate irony was not lost on me that as he cast me aside, she accepted me into her family.

The ugly truth I had been shrugging off all night settled heavily on my shoulders, seeping down into my chest and sending dull, aching pains down the length of my body and then climbing up into my medulla with a persistent, pounding throb.

I needed more therapy than I could pay for in a lifetime.

I would have to settle for a Slurpee.

I wrenched the door of the convenience store open and gagged a little at the overpowering smell of Taquitos. Before I could walk in, though, two other people came out through the open door, giggling.

One of them stopped in front of me. "Emma!" she squealed, throwing her arms around my neck. Effing Mallory Lauren. "Are you picking up booze for the party? Because we have tons, this is our fourth and final liquor run before people start showing up," she jerked a thumb back towards a brown paper bag growing out of someone's hands. When she peered around it, I recognized her as Mallory's clearly responsible older sister buying alcohol for underage kids.

The Facebook invitation I'd scoffed at this morning at Charlie's. Was it really only this morning? It felt like months had passed, aging and fatiguing me beyond reason.

"Oh, no, I just…" Just… couldn't think of a lie fast enough and let the thought end there. I gestured towards the store, like Taquitos were my calling.

"Do you need a ride? Because we could take you back to the house with us. We don't want anybody drunk driving anyway," she said solemnly.

"No, I'm not…" Seriously, a little coherency would really help.

"Not drinking? Oh that's unacceptable. This is like, THEE party of the year Emma, you're going to be really mad at yourself if you stay sober and miss all the fun. Get in the car." She pushed me towards the backseat of a blue Ford Focus. "Now!"

I pulled open the door and climbed in. The fight in me was waging a different war somewhere else entirely.

I let myself think about it for a second before the crushing pain forced the air from my lungs and I turned numb and shut it down as a defense mechanism that I never knew I had.

As I pressed my hot forehead against the cool glass of the window, Responsible Sister turned over her crappy four cylinder engine and backed out of the parking lot, heading back on the highway and closer to town, hand delivering me to forced merriment and high school tomfoolery.

_Are you listening?_ I thought idly, skimming the surface of the pain that waited to swallow me whole lest I dwell on it for more than a millisecond of conscious thought. I knew I was well within his range. The last time we'd tried, he could hear me from a 10 mile radius.

Perhaps he was.

But I couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Mallory was blabbering in the front seat excitedly about boys and beer while I looked up at the moon and wondered idly why I'd never taken the time to howl at it. I felt like I could right about now and it would be incredibly therapeutic. I think there's a word for it… primal scream therapy, maybe? I was willing to bet that the wolf equivalent was even more cathartic. Everything was better when you were a wolf.

When we pulled into her driveway, there were already several cars lined up on the street and a handful of bozos waiting inside to get intoxicated and make poor decisions. They cheered as we approached the house with more alcohol. _Why_ was I here?

We walked inside and it was slightly reminiscent of high school parties that you see in movies. I think it was more a case of life imitating art than anything else. You watch _Can't Hardly Wait _when you're 11 and think _that's what it's supposed to be like_, so when you get into high school and actually go to a party, you do what you can to try and make it fit the scheme that was carved out in your formative years. I was half-waiting for Peter Facinelli to stumble into the room and belch something about Mike Dexter being a god and a role model… when really, aren't they _all _just assholes?

As if on cue, a meaty looking guy who sat behind me in trigonometry gulped the last of his beer and burped out "Party at the Moon Tower!"

_This is not my life_, I thought silently.

_No, your life is __**way**__ worse_, my hateful inner voice countered.

Good point. _The Dazed and Confused_ misquote brought another reference from the movie to mind… _"That's what I love about these high school girls man, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."_ It was a little backwards but the significance wasn't lost on me.

Maybe a drink wasn't such a bad idea.

I never really drank before, though. I mean I'd had that wine with my mom the night I told her about Voldemort and gotten a little buzzy from it but other than that, niente. Perhaps Mallory's sister had purchased a nice pinot noir at 7-11…?

I scanned the room and saw a kid drinking out of a bottle of laundry detergent. This led me to assume that the odds of a crisp red on hand were slim.

Mallory was standing at the breakfast bar of eat-in kitchen with a little glass clutched in her hand and look of satisfied disgust on her face. The bottle next to her said "Jose Cuervo" on the label. I walked over and nudged her with my elbow.

"What's a girl gotta do to get a drink around here?"

"Emma! Ok here, do a tequila shot!" she squealed, clearly already intoxicated. Tipping the bottle over, she sloshed the gold liquid into the tiny glass. The color of it did not remind me of anyone's eyes. I swear.

With that, I frantically reached for the shot and toss it down my throat. It burned the whole way down and made my face pucker up unattractively, I'm sure, but once it settled in my stomach it felt… warm. And I would have done just about anything to fight off the icy coldness building up inside of me. I grabbed the bottle and poured another shot which I promptly downed.

"Yeah, Emma!" Mallory chanted. "I'm so glad you're here, I'd always hoped we could be closer. Tonight is our night! We can have a long talk and stay up all night together."

Well if that was the case, I'd need another drink. But at that moment, Mallory leaned forward to… I don't know, whisper something stupid into my face I guess, and knocked the shot glass to the floor where it shattered into a million shards.

I shrugged, unscrewed the cap from the bottle, and took a large swig from the source.

In the hour that followed, I think that happened about four more times before I started slurring my words and decided that being drunk was excellent… and took a few more mouthfuls of beautifully burning amber.

It was then that I'd realized Mallory had migrated elsewhere and I was sitting alone, bogarting my Cuervo. I took another drink to toast my loneliness… which at the present, had nothing to do with the name of which we do not speak.

"Edward who!" I shouted loudly to the room at large, pumping my fist in the air victoriously. Nobody answered and I giggled to myself.

Moments later, I realized that I had to pee, so I slid off the bar stool and made for the bathroom… but stumbled over my own feet and landed on my knees in the broken glass. It dug into my flesh and started to bleed. I laughed again.

"Good thing Edward Who isn't here," I whispered to myself, wiping a stream of blood off my shin with a forefinger. I shifted my eyes around to make sure no one was looking before I hesitantly brought it to my lips and licked it.

Cheesecake SO trumps blood.

_I'm drunk and tasting my own blood_, I thought to him. Really, it seemed like a great idea. Why go through the trouble of drunk dialing when you could just… forward thoughts into someone's mind?

_XOXO, wish you were here_. I laughed when I imagined the picture that would go on that postcard.

_Just kidding, dickburger, wish you were dead. _I chuckled when I realized he sort of already was. _Real dead. Buried-under-a-grave-marker-where-you-belong dead. Not… sticking your undead peen in everyone who looks like me dead._

The sting was substantially numbed by the alcohol. I could say and do whatever I wanted without it rippling into unfathomable pain that wracked through my body leaving me in just an aching pile of agony. I didn't feel hurt. I felt ballsy and spiteful and really angry.

It was weird to not get any response from him, though. I could say whatever I wanted and he couldn't do anything about it.

Then I felt my cell phone buzz in my pocket. A text from Edward.

_**Emma, come home. Now.**_

Home? I had no home. My technical residence belonged to my Jezebel mother and cuckold father which was nowhere near I wanted to be. And I sure as shit wasn't going back to the Cullens' so they could spread pity on me like a bagel and schmear. No, drunk and on the floor was preferable to both my other options.

_You're not the boss of me, Springsteen. You porked my mom once and now you want to play daddy? Fuck off. And you didn't even say "please." I thought Renaissance men were well mannered._

I had a vague inkling that the Renaissance was not in Chicago in 1918 but I brushed it off.

_**Please.**_

_I think you've pleased your share of Black women today._

I could practically see him pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. This was all terribly inconvenient for him, I'm sure. He didn't respond for a few minutes, which was hugely unlike him… vampire reflexes and all.

_**I love you.**_

Hookay, that's enough of that. I powered down the phone and stuck it back in my pocket. I didn't need this ass basket killing my buzz with emotion when I had beer muscles and was only fixing for round two of our own personal Rumble in the Jungle.

_I turned you off._

Thought I'd give him the heads up that this was now a one sided conversation and he would have to hear everything I wanted him to with no rebuttal.

"You're hurt." My unfocused gaze fell on a pair of men's boots inches away from me. It was then I realized that I was still crouched on the floor, bleeding from the knees, and really had to pee still. If I hadn't swallowed my sense of propriety with my fifth shot I would have been embarrassed. As it was, I just froze in place and hoped that that somehow made me invisible and he would go away.

I felt him put his hands under my armpits and lift me to a standing position, which I promptly stumbled out of.

"Whoa there… looks like someone had quite a bit to drink tonight," he chuckled affably as he put a hand on my lower back for balance. I could hear the smile in his voice.

I finally brought my eyes to his face. Holy shit that was a good looking guy. I mean, I had to squint and imagine that there was only one of him to get an idea of what I was seeing but I know sexy when it picks my drunk ass up off the floor and good lord, what a specimen he was.

_A hot guy has his hands on me_. I didn't know if it would have any forbearance on him at all but in the interest of full disclosure, I thought he should know. He might care. He said he L-ed me just a minute ago… and God forbid he was to find out in some excruciating and horrific way that would ruin the rest of his life. I sent him a mental snapshot of the Brad Pitt in front of me.

I think I managed to smile at Brad. "I'm Emma. I drank tequila. And a little of my own blood," I confessed.

He smirked and cocked an eyebrow. "How was it? The blood, I mean. I can see what the tequila did to you."

"I've had better."

"Haven't we all," Brad said with a smirk. The hand from my lower back had migrated to my hip and was holding me steady while he rested the other one at my opposite elbow, like if I fell in either direction he would prop me back up. I realized we were much closer to each other than is generally acceptable in polite society for having just met but he didn't seem to mind and so I didn't either. I took down the floodgate in my brain so that Edward would see it all in IMAX.

"We ought to clean those knees up. Make sure there's no glass stuck in there."

"My hero."

Leaning forward, I let my breasts graze lightly across his chest.

_Take that_.

Brad tilted his head to the side like that amused him and his grip tightened on my hip.

I closed the remaining distance between us and leaned my body into his.

Who knew being drunk made you this horny? I'd practically forgotten about Edward Who.

Except that I was only doing this to punish him. Tomato, to-_mah_-toe.

"You haven't told me your name," I whispered, snaking an arm up around his neck and surreptitiously pulling his head down.

_Now watch this_.

Capturing his mouth with mine, I kissed him, soft and wet, and lightly traced my fingers down the length of his arm.

"What's in a name?" he asked, gently pushing his nose into the soft spot behind my ear and inhaling.

Well if we're going to talk Shakespeare… "But just a pound of flesh," I whispered back, tilting my hips into his groin. That was pretty much the only quote I knew from the Bard. Was the pound of flesh about a boner? It somehow seemed apt. I really needed to read that stupid play.

_How do you like me now?_ I thought, reconnecting with Brad's mouth and running my tongue hotly over his lower lip as I pressed the length of my body into him, hard.

"Why don't we go someplace more quiet?" he asked.

Ahh, so Brad had seen every high school party movie ever made, too. Well played.

"Ok," I breathed, sort of sickened by what a slut I was turning out to be, but convincing myself that it was for the greater good and that Edward had to writhe.

He took my hand and led me towards the door. "Gazebo," he said with a sly smile.

I followed.

_I hope it hurts._


	25. Full Moon

**Author's Chapter Notes:**

**Hai bbs.**

**I'm short and so is this chapter, but I think we'll both turn out ok.**

**SM owns Twilight. I tie it up and burn it with cigarettes.**

Emma's POV

"Follow me," Brad looked over his shoulder with a smile and tugged on my hand as we stepped into the crisp night air. We took a few steps forward, well he took steps, I kind of tripped on my toes and tried to make into a cool dance. Drunk doesn't wear so well on the clumsy.

When we were about 10 yards from the house, I looked around.

I did not see any gazebo.

That's when I felt his hand close over my mouth and his arm form manacles behind my back as he dragged me off the property and into the thin forest surrounding the backyard.

Bella's POV

He looked tired and war-beaten when he finally stepped back into the house. I was still sitting silently at the piano but I rose when he approached me.

"Leaving?" he asked wearily.

I nodded, shifting my eyes from him and looking at the door.

"I'll come with you."

The words struck a painful memory that I'd buried for so long, I'd almost forgotten about it entirely. But they brought me back to a time when my battle scars were fresh, when the only thing I understood was suffering. I knew just how to answer.

"You can't, Edward. Where I'm going... it's not the right place for you."

His face crumpled and his eyes glowed with pain.

He remembered, too.

"I'm no good for you, Edward." I took a step towards him and he cowered back. "My world is not for you," I recited, advancing on him with each word.

"Bella, please-" he began, but I cut him off.

"I don't want you, Edward."

And _that_ changes things.

His hand reached up and twisted the fabric of his shirt into a fist, resting over a heart that, while long dead, was surely aching anyway.

"Of course, I'll always love you... in a way. But what happened tonight made me realize that it's time for a change. I'm tired of pretending to be something I'm not, Edward. I've let this go on much too long and I'm sorry for that."

"Don't. Don't do this," he said quietly, shaking his head with his gaze cast downward.

He knew the script perfectly.

"You're not good for me, Edward."

I had spent the duration of my life thinking the exact opposite was true. Funny how one infinitesimal shift in the stratosphere can change everything under the sun.

I closed the distance between us and put my hand under his chin, lifting it so he had to look at me. "I promise that this will be the last time you see me. I won't come back. I won't put you through anything like this again. You can go on with your life without any more interference from me."

He tried to shift his eyes away from what came next but I ducked back into his line of vision and trained my burning stare into the sad pools of liquid gold set in the beautiful, icy planes of his face.

"It will be as if I'd never existed."

His face was eerily blank, wiped clean of emotion. The back of his legs hit the piano bench and he sunk down to a seated position, right hand still clutching his empty heart as he stared unseeingly past me and into what I imagine was the very same abyss I contended with 22 years ago.

He had a line here, but it appeared that he was going to skip it. I chose to ignore his negligence.

"You won't forget about me," I continued, as if answering a question he forgot to ask, "but I don't have to tell you how easily distracted your kind is, do I?"

His face seemed to fall further still, though I didn't think it was possible. This must have been what I'd looked like to Jacob after Edward had gone; I'd seen this same expression in the mirror for quite some time all those years ago. _Love, life, meaning... over._

It wasn't easy to watch. I almost felt like I was reliving it through his clear and present agony. But it was immeasurably better to be on the delivering end of grief.

"You left. And I had to grow up. We're like Peter Pan and Wendy now, Edward, and you still live in this world of make believe. But I can't. I have a life, and while it isn't perfect like everything you lay your hands on," I paused for a minute to amend the statement, adding _except for sex, of course_ in my head, grateful for the one millionth time that he couldn't hear my thoughts, "but it's mine. I have a man that loved me when you didn't. A man that I love back, who doesn't make me compromise anything.

"I didn't truly realize it until your presence raised the question. Like, how do you know chocolate is your favorite ice cream cone flavor when you've never tasted vanilla? But I licked. And I only had to do it once. I like chocolate better.

"I used to think about my life without you as an ever-present new moon, a starless night, my darkest hours. But I can see now that it was all just hiding behind the clouds for a very long time. And now that they've parted, it's like my world has been set on fire once more, without any consideration for you. I love Jacob. It's easy with him. He is my life now.

"You don't have to tell me how much it hurts. I know. Maybe better than anyone else in the world. Twenty two years ago, I was in your exact position... well, not _exact_ position, I was sobbing in an inconsolable heap on the damp bracken of the forest floor for several hours. Lucky for you, I have the good taste and common sense to break a person's heart in a well-decorated Victorian living room. But I've felt it, Edward. I told you I wouldn't wish it on anyone, and I meant it. It's only unfortunate circumstance that's making me do this to you now. And while I can't say it ever gets _better_... it does get easier. Slowly, so slowly you almost can't tell it's happening, it all gets easier. Sleeping, breathing, living..." as I trailed off I realized he didn't really do any of them anyway. It made my quirk my head to the side, amused. He and I were, and had always been, two very different creatures.

"I really was never meant for your world. And now there's no room for you in mine." He closed his eyes and held very still.

"That's everything, I suppose." I almost felt like brushing my hands clean. Our final act was coming to a close. No encore, no curtain call. It ended here. "I won't bother you again. Goodbye, Edward."

I ducked down to his level, leaned over his shoulder and delicately pressed my lips to his cheek, then let them rest on the shell of his ear and whispered softly into it.

"Clean break."

And I was gone.

**Chapter End Notes:**

**Reuse, reduce, recycle, and review. It's good for the environment.**


	26. The Princess and the Pea Brain

Emma's POV

It took a moment in my sluggish drunken response time to begin to struggle, and a minute longer than that for my instinct to phase to rear up.

I shut my eyes tightly and tried to shift.

And remained feebly human.

I tried again. Nothing.

I focused all my strength and energy into imagining my wolf body to punish Brad the date rapist beyond his wildest dreams.

But I stayed nothing more than a girl in his steel grip as he pulled me through the sparse woods and into what looked like a pre-fabricated garage plopped in the middle of it all.

"Let's see it."

Was this his idea of foreplay? Because that didn't really grease the wheels for me. I almost never refer to my naked form as "it."

I backed away from him and glared hatefully.

He sighed. "You're going to make this hard for me aren't you?"

What the FUCK. Was he like… dirty talking? Had he never seen a porno? I was so monumentally not turned on by this and now I hated him so my revenge fuck was out the window. This night was going right down the shitter at the speed of sound.

He crossed the small space, pulled his arm back, and cracked me across the cheek with his fist.

I was sent reeling and fell to the floor, reaching up and pressing my palm to my face where a lump was already forming. This was so not right. It should be healing, not developing a golf ball under my eye.

And then I thought about my bloody knees, and how they should have coagulated in seconds, but kept streaming O Positive long after the expected wolf recovery time.

My blood. The very essence of my body, my heritage. The reason I was even able to shift in the first place… thinned and changed, absorbing foreign properties by the alcohol.

They should really put warnings on the labels for this kind of thing. Should not be consumed by pregnant mothers. Do not operate heavy machinery. Lowers inhibitions and judgment. May cause temporary sluttiness with hot, sociopathic strangers. And impedes wolfishness.

Mother fuck, how was I supposed to fight off a sex offender and wife beater as a LADY?

"Hey, um, are you ok?"

Mood swings much? HELLO, you're the one who hit me. I didn't look at him and stayed very still on the ground. I thought about _A Christmas Story_ when the bully's picking on Ralphie and his brother… _"Randy laid there like a slug, it was his only defense."_ I equate human femininity to a dopey little fat kid who gets ambushed on the playground.

"I don't think it's her," Brad, who I immediately renamed Chester (as in… the molester) said to no one in particular.

Softly, I heard a door open and I realized that there were two rooms in the pre-fab, and someone was walking into our half. I trained my eyes on the floor and stayed frozen.

"Hit her again," another man's voice responded with a faint French lilt.

"I'm not gonna hit her if it's the wrong girl. I don't want to hurt anyone." Um, a little late, says the welt on my cheek.

"Then you're the wrong man for the job," Frenchy said back.

I felt a sharp kick in my back that lifted me up from the floor and then slammed me back down, making me yelp in pain when my head smashed into the concrete.

"My God," Frenchy gasped. "You look just like her."

I cracked an eye then, and started calling Frenchy "Bob Marley" in my head because all I could make out were his dreadlocks. Bob Marley and Chester the Molester. A motley fucking crew if ever I saw one.

"You're a touch more… ethnic looking, though." Than who, Vanna fucking White? I craned my neck up and hissed at him.

Bob chuckled. "It's ok, child, you're prettier than she. But she smelled better. No offense. Nothing in the world compares to her scent. She's… dessert. And you smell a bit like a wet dog."

He leaned over me, raking me with interested eyes and I could see him working out some equation in his head. "The math is just about right for her to be your mother."

I scrambled as far away from him as I could get, pressing my back into the wall of the sizable shed and ignoring the dull pains shooting through various parts of my body. My spine, my cheek, my back… everything was singing with ache.

Bob walked over to me and gently ran a thumb over the swollen bulb on my face. I realized then that Chester had broken the skin, because when Bob took his hand away, there was blood on his fingers. He slipped each one individually into his mouth and sucked the red liquid away. Fucking leech. How did I miss this? I've spent far too much time in the presence of vampires if I can't sniff one out when I'm whorishly kissing it. Cuervo or no Cuervo, that shit was bananas; I should have known better.

"Decidedly lupine," he smiled around the thumb between his lips before removing it with a popping sound. "She's the one, Garrett."

Chester breathed a sigh of relief.

"So tell us, little one, why do you stay human? You've been turned wolf with much less provocation than this, have you not? Or perhaps I should get Edward in here and try to kiss him. That seems to really push your buttons."

Oh fuck me. These nincompoops belonged to Tanya.

"I'm curious as to who your father is, though. I'm told shape-shifting is in the lineage, no? And your mother… she's no more than human."

So… did my mom fuck _every_ vamp in North America?

"You know my mother?" I had wanted so badly to maintain a code of silence but when he threw mommy dearest into the mix it piqued my curiosity far too much for me to ignore.

Bob laughed quietly on an inhale. "Not nearly as well as I would have liked to. We had a brief encounter many years ago, when _she_ was the Cullens' pet. Interestingly enough, that trait, too, seems genetic." Bob smiled cruelly. "I was with a small clan of nomads travelling through the area. We had a… bit of a skirmish when our leader tried to kill your mother. It seemed he was put off by Edward's devotion to her. I backed off, not wanting to challenge such a large coven… and, in summation, your Edward killed our leader. To save your mother's life, of course."

I slid down the wall a few my inches and felt my head loll off to the side. I was dizzy with the revelation. It was so much more than I ever needed to know.

Bob could tell. "I can see that this is all news to you. In a way, it's news to me, too. I had no idea that the evil hell beast was Bella's child. It makes things much more interesting. Is she well?"

I remained quiet and motionless.

"Perhaps I'll have to pay her a visit while I'm in town." He licked his lips greedily.

I raised my middle finger at him.

"Laurent," Garrett interrupted Bob (who evidently had a name also, go figure)'s mental masturbation over my mom's blood, "she's just a kid. This whole thing is ridiculous. She hasn't even phased! We ought to just go home."

"Yes," Laurent began, "why is that, do you suppose?" He turned his attention back to me. "I know what you're capable of when you become a dog. Don't you even have enough dignity to defend yourself?"

I said nothing.

"I suppose not. You're content with mommy's sloppy seconds for romance, that's a big indication of your worthlessness. You sprang forth to deter Tanya's advances on Edward but when your very life is threatened, you do nothing? It's pathetic, really. You live for him, and nothing more? You sad, simpering little girl."

Oh please. I wasn't going to let some Rastafarian bloodsucker reverse psychol-ege me. I kicked Edward in the junk and ran away. I'm not sad or simpering, and I'm really only a girl half the time. Nothing he said affected me. Douche.

_Clearly I'm a vampire magnet_, I thought to him lazily, sending a mental Polaroid of Cheech and Chong along with it. _I'd appreciate if you'd call off the dogs, though. Especially considering I can't be one until I sober up_.

I didn't know exactly what they wanted from me, but my best guess was that they were fixing for a fight. I can't count the number of times Emmett had suggested something quite similar. His version usually ended in Jell-O, but had the same basic principles. These idiots were a little more violent about it, though.

"You're really taking all the fun out of it," Laurent drawled. "I wanted to destroy a monster, not kill a human. I can do that any old time."

Garrett shot him a sharp glare. It was then I realized that Laurent's eyes were indeed a dark ruby. Garrett's were black.

"Well, not any old time. Just on vacation. Without Irina to be held accountable to… what's the saying? While the cat is away…" he shrugged and trailed off.

It was starting to make sense. They were part of the Denali coven, a family of "vegetarians," but it didn't seem like they were too strict about it. Or Laurent wasn't at least. Garrett clearly hadn't fed in quite some time.

The Buffalo Soldier watched as the realization clicked in my face. He smiled a wide creepy grin that belonged on a pedophile at a playground. "I cheat."

"Don't they all," I whispered under my breath. Oops. Open mouth, insert foot.

"Has your vampire been untrue?" Laurent exclaimed gleefully.

"Um no, he totally loves me. I meant on the SAT. Mind-reading and shit."

"You lie," he brought his face inches from mine, I could smell his sickly sweet stench.

"So sue me." Ahh, the old standby circa fifth grade. Good one, Emma.

I was starting to sweat. Stuck in this body with two vampires of dubious origin, one who had made a breezy comment in passing about destroying me, I wasn't exactly doing my fucking happy dance.

"He doesn't love you," Laurent pushed a lock of hair away from my face and brought his mouth uncomfortable close to mine. I resisted the urge to recoil. "He loved your mother."

Do I have a "kick me" sign on my back that I don't know about? Jesus, twist that knife a little harder, reggae man!

He was guessing and reading my body language and it was supposed to bother me because he was poking my sore spot. I know how it works. I kept my composure and rolled my eyes. I felt like maintaining my nonchalance was the only way to get out of this; the second he could sense my discomfort I'd be done.

"We like to keep it in the family. She's too old now. I inherited him. He's an heirloom."

"Comedian. I like that. But your humor is clearly a defense mechanism to combat your disgrace." He clucked his tongue and shook his head in mock sadness.

"Stop running your fucking mouth, Ziggy. You don't even know what you're talking about."

He smiled curiously at me, like lunch had never sassed him before.

"Besides, how am I supposed to take you seriously when you get bitched around by a woman? Irina, I believe you said her name was…? Humans have a phrase for guys like you… pussy-whipped."

His teeth snapped together and he was visibly enraged. "You know not of what you speak," he growled at me. Oops again. I'd only wanted to show him that I wasn't scared, not challenge him to a throw-down when I was presently nothing more than 125 pounds of vagina. Maybe I should have thought twice about messing with the bull when I wasn't quite ready for the horns. He backhanded me so hard I fell back to the floor and spat out blood. An incisor on the left wiggled when I touched it with my tongue.

Taking another step towards me, Laurent reached out and grabbed a fistful of my hair, pulling me to my feet and pressing his nose to my throat, breathing deeply, gruffly.

_Ok, it's less fun now._

"Fight," Laurent whispered roughly.

I couldn't, obviously. Anything I could throw down would be pathetic and laughable against him. By only my hair and the collar of my shirt, he pushed me across the room at vampire speed and bashed my skull into the wall. I saw spots and might have even lost consciousness for a few seconds; every part of me throbbed.

"I'd at least hoped this would be entertaining. I can't believe I was so excited for nothing. All I get to do is drain a human. Something I've done countless times."

Drain, eh? That was never part of Emmett's plan either. Things had seemed to go downhill real fast about then.

_They're going to kill me._ My hand hovered over the pocket when my lifeless cell phone rested. I never thought I'd want to hear from him again. I never imagined that I'd be the kind of girl who needs saving.

Laurent noticed my hand, he reached forward and pulled the pocket off of my jeans, catching the phone before it could fall to the floor.

He laughed. "What were you going to do? Call 911? Your precious Edward? I could end your life faster than you could hit the send button, you silly little bitch." Making a fist, he crushed the phone in his grasp.

"I wish you would change for me. Wolf's on the diet. The females would be pleased with my compliance," he mused. "And you're less… mangy than wild animals." An almost forlorn look crossed his face.

I glanced over at Garrett, who looked decidedly occupied by the patterns in the floor. It seemed there was a little dissention between them, and I had a feeling it was related to Garrett's abstinence from blood while Laurent had clearly fed on humans recently. I decided to try and play it up. Crudely and without any grace, of course, as was my nature.

"Hey, you let this shit-for-brains jerk chicken call all the shots around here?" I questioned.

Garrett met my gaze.

"Are you a slave to icy vamp vag too? Because it's clear that you're here on someone else's clock. Is this about Tanya's recent dismemberment? Have you come to avenge her? Tell that fucking cunt to man up and fight her own battles. I'd love to sink my teeth into her ass again."

"Keep talking, you are merely digging your grave deeper," Laurent whispered to me.

"I wasn't speaking to you, mon." He grabbed my forearm and snapped a bone in it. Maybe both, I couldn't tell.

Everything in me wanted to wail in pain, but my pride was somehow stronger. My eyes scrunched closed and I might have bit the tip off of my tongue, but I didn't say shit about it to the wanker.

Great. As if the deck wasn't stacked high enough against me in that it was two versus one, supernatural versus pathetic human, and men versus woman… now I only had one arm.

Laurent was getting angrier with each of my passing heartbeats. I could tell my novelty was wearing off and I was minutes away from desanguination. I shut my eyes.

"Open them, girl. I want you to watch until you pass out." He stomped down on my foot; I felt the tarsels crumble to dust.

_Soon_, I thought to him. The word meant many things at once; soon I would die, soon he wouldn't have to choose, soon the nightmare would be over.

It was almost welcoming. I revisited the idea I'd had in the forest about letting it end, how easy it would be to just… stop being. No pain, suffering, sorrow. But I shook it off because I'm a fighter by nature, I'm tougher than that… whatever the "that" is, I know I am. Death as a means of escape was something I'd never actively seek out, but it seemed almost apropos now. I would never have to deal with the mess that was created long before I was born, something I'd accidentally stumbled into and tangled myself in beyond extraction. What's the word for it? Serendipity. Destruction at the hands of a stranger isn't exactly most people's definition, but I was sort of looking at it as my fate. This is what was meant to happen.

Laurent stepped forward and placed a hand at the base of my neck, running the other back up into my hair and pulling sideways, tilting my throat to him.

_Goodbye_.

"Hello?"

Laurent's fingers tightened everywhere he touched me. He whipped around to face the voice calling from the entryway.

"Oh hey guys. The door was open. Hope you don't mind…?" He stepped across the threshold and strolled over to lean against the wall with his hands in his pockets, the portrait of nonchalance.

"You have no place here," Laurent growled, digging his nails into my skin with one hand while the other yanked my hair, pulling my line of sight to the ceiling and away from my knight in shining luxury sedan.

Well this was an interesting development.

"I suggest you unhand the lady." I couldn't see him, but his tone implied inappropriate casualness, like he was shrugging or disinterestedly examining his nail beds.

"This is no lady." Laurent brought his face to my chest and inhaled deeply.

"Oh and Tanya is? The Denali girls are nothing more than common whores, don't pretend for a second that you mean anything to them. Idiots to do their dirty work, that's all you are."

With his eyes on Edward, Laurent stuck out his tongue and slowly licked across the arches of my collarbones. "I can think of less desirable tasks." I choked back vomit and clenched my hands into fists as tightly as I could.

It took me a second to realize that I was actually making fists with both hands. Surprised, I flexed them again and came to the conclusion that wolves didn't get hangovers. My high body temperature must have burned off the alcohol at an unprecedented speed; my arm was no longer broken and I was no longer a useless lump of shit waiting to be saved like some douchey damsel in distress.

I got to be the hero.

_Who called you anyway?_

I heard him chuckle and pictured him shaking his head in disbelief. Well it was _true_, wasn't it? I didn't ask for any help.

Get ready for something special.

With that, I burst out of form and less than a second, Laurent had only fistfuls of hackles in his grip.

I growled and he turned to face me. The look of sheer horror on his face was priceless, like the kid in _Stand By Me_ when he realized he had leeches hanging from his nutsack. I took a mental snapshot to show Edward.

Then I fucking bit that cock knocker's head off.

No joke, I just opened my mouth and decapitated that dirty son of a bitch.

It tasted fucking terrible so I spit it right back out and it rolled across the floor until it landed face-up at Edward's feet, the unseeing eyes frozen in shock.

Edward didn't move. He sort of just stared at it for a second and then brought his face to mine.

"Did you seriously just do that?"

In response, I kicked the headless corpse that lay before me.

"Holy fucking shit." Garrett. I had forgotten about him.

_Ask him if he wants a piece of me._

Edward laughed under his breath.

_Do it!_

He turned to Garrett. "If you want to fight, I'm sure that could be arranged. But I think it would be better for all of us if we could resolve this peacefully," Edward offered.

_That's not what I fucking said, ask him if he wants a PIECE of ME!_

"And, um, Emma would like to know if you… want… a piece of her?"

"God, no," Garrett breathed. "I… I just want to go home. It was all Laurent, really, I never wanted to hurt her. I swear, I never would have let it get this far if it was up to me. I came because Kate asked me to, Tanya's sister… but I'm not going back to Alaska. Those broads are trouble."

Amen.

_Let him go._

"Are you sure?" Edward asked quizzically. Admittedly, it was very out of character for me. There are few things I love more than vigilante justice. But I sort of believed him. And fucking guillotining ass-basket vampires is a really good way to work out your aggressions. I was feeling benevolent.

_Yes. He's a good kisser._

Edward winced.

_Fuck you._

He nodded once like "fair enough" and motioned towards the door. "Go. Don't make me sorry for having mercy on you. I don't ever want to see you here again."

Garrett scrambled for the door, thankful for the second chance.

_You didn't have mercy on shit, I'm the fate-maker around here. Tell him to call me some time._

"No."

_Do it or I'll string your balls and wear them as a necklace._

"I won't do it."

"What does she want?" Garrett asked trepidaciously from the doorway.

_Tell him I want to watch you guys makeout._

Edward barked out a laugh. "Just go, Garrett, before she changes her mind," he tacked on the last part ominously, like I was asking for maiming dismemberment, not some sexy gay shit.

Garrett stepped out the door and I reverted to human form, running after him. "Call me!" I shouted at his disappearing backside, long gone before I glanced down at my body and added "I look good naked!" The sentiment echoed off the trees and bounced around 3 times before it faded away.

Edward sighed heavily behind me.

In that moment I began to really resent his presence. I didn't fucking ask him to come here. I was just… bidding my farewells at the end of my life. Right then, I thanked any god who would listen that I hadn't done something shitty like tell him I loved him right before I died… that would have been really embarrassing.

"You shouldn't have come here," I said quietly, crossing my arms over my breasts and looking away from him.

"I will always come when you need me."

I wanted to make some scathing remark about always coming in my mom, too, but I found that to be in poor taste and decided to go with: "I don't need you. Ever." in its stead.

"Emma, you would have _died_!" he argued.

"Um what room were _you_ in? Because I'm pretty sure I handled it. You just stood there like people furniture. But good job on that, Laz-E-Boy."

He sighed again, exasperated.

"Stop fucking doing that. You don't even need to breathe. It's irritating and overly dramatic." Everything Edward did was overly dramatic. His entire existence was like _The Hills_ on steroids.

He was quiet after that.

"I trust you will take care of this," I gestured to the Laurent pieces.

He nodded solemnly.

"And give me your clothes." Mine had shredded in the transformation. Again.

And would you believe he fucking did it? Started stripping down right then and there. Took off everything but his underwear and handed it to me. What a bitch. I guess the reasoning was that he owed me a little more than the literal shirt off his back.

My vagina growled at me, animalistic, when my eyes touched each individually compartmented muscle of his stomach. I told her to get some fucking self respect and shut up. I slid into the pants and button down shirt; he watched me the whole time wordlessly.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you."

I let the statement hang in the air for a little while.

Knowing Edward, the scenario in his head went a little like this: I, no more than a silly woman, land myself in mortal danger, he swoops in and saves the day, I am wildly appreciative for his valiancy, he takes me in his arms, dips me, and kisses me like he means it, they all live happily ever after. He's so predictable in that way… just your average, everyday romantic hero looking for someone to rescue.

It kind of throws a wrench in his plans that I'm the baddest bitch in town.

I turned away from him and headed for the door. As I put a foot over the threshold, he spoke to my back.

"It's you, Emma."

I didn't move.

"If I have to choose, it's you."

Well ain't _that_ some shit.


End file.
